Entitlement Blues

I have a few words to say on the subject of entitlement. I’m not specifically referring to the common usage of the term in reference to government “entitlement” programs that conservatives take great pleasure in railing against. I’m more interested in the generic way that people like to use entitlement to manipulate their lives.

It’s easy to turn on the TV and see politicians behaving as if they were entitled to be elected to a particular office. The most glaring example of this in recent years has been the Bush and Clinton families. First, George H.W. Bush was supposedly entitled to public office because of the legacy of his father, Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush. Then, “H.W.”’s kids, George W. and Jeb, were entitled to governor positions because of their father. And then, we were supposed to crown “Dubya” as President because “Daddy Bush”’s influence would obviously be imparted on his son and make us all feel so very secure. And now Hillary Clinton is pulling the same stunt, suggesting that as President, it’ll just be a happy-feely continuation of the Bill Clinton years. And I get the definite impression that she feels that Barack Obama is usurping her entitlement to that office! After all, it takes an awful lot of gall to suggest that Obama be her running mate as Vice-President when he’s leading in votes, delegates, and states won! Of course, political entitlement is nothing new. It’s as old as our country, and is very commonplace at the state level nowadays (Kennedy, Rockefeller, Romney, Dodd, Gore, Pryor, Bayh, Bennett, Sununu, Landrieu, Long, Murkowski, and Chafee are names of families with father/son, father/daughter, and husband/wife political “inheritances”).

But there is a sense of entitlement that permeates all of us, and to some extent I suppose that the pervasive advertising in our lives can be partially blamed. By this I mean that it’s very easy for us to look around and see what somebody else has and then say, “I work just as hard (or harder) as them, I deserve that, too!” And of course, Madison Avenue also says we deserve it! It wasn’t always so easy to buy things on credit as it is nowadays. The way I see things is that I like material things as much as the next guy. But I can be satisfied with a reasonably-priced priced product instead of a deluxe model with all the bells and whistles (and a much higher price tag). The concept of “enough” is something that I desperately wish would creep into the psyche of others so that I wouldn’t sometimes be made to feel that I’m “selling myself short” by “settling” for “lesser value” when I know, deep in my heart, that the question of what one is really entitled to has nothing to do with the excuses that people make to cover their material greed (or political ambition).