BY RUSSELL TURNER
SHOOTING OURSELVES IN THE FOOT
Almost everyone has heard the old expression about shooting his or her self in the foot. It usually illustrates the stupid acts that we humans are capable of which in the long run will cause us problems. Over the past few days I have been watching the rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, near the St. Louis area. According to the mainstream press the lawless behavior was triggered by a Police officer shooting and killing a young black man. As usual the mainstream press seems to inflame the situation instead of merely reporting all of the facts from all sides. Instead of going on a rampage and destroying private property maybe the rioters should use a little common sense. I agree that the economy is not going gangbusters like some in the government would want you to believe, but that is no excuse to destroy your neighborhood.
If you believe all of the rhetoric that the government class puts out, all of our problems will be solved with good, high paying jobs. While it is nice to have a job and have some money in your pocket, until we start developing some good moral behavior we aren’t solving anything. I can see the wisdom of one of this nation’s founders, John Adams, when he said, “Our government was created for a moral and religious people; when our people are no longer moral and religious our system is totally inadequate”. In the case of going on a rampage like some of the people in the Ferguson area have, I doubt they ever thought by looting and burning the local businesses that they were destroying jobs in their communities. I seriously doubt that those businesses will rebuild there; they know that if the people in that community are stupid enough to destroy their only tax base once they will more than likely do it again. In the long run the rioters are hurting themselves. I guess for now it is more important to steal something that doesn’t belong to them and maybe that will somehow even the scales on some alleged injustice.
Business people are not stupid; before they invest money in an area they do their research. They will look at the education system, the per-capita income, etc. In the case of fast food chains they will observe the traffic patterns. But by far the biggest factor is the taxes that they will have to pay or collect. If the local citizens have a habit of voting in additional taxes when other solutions could be found, that can be a big deterrent to locating in that area. We need to realize that businesses are created to make money and not to create some social program.
We Americans have developed a bad habit of shooting ourselves in the foot because we want instant gratification and we want someone else to pay for it. Sure there are injustices in the real world every day, instead of burning down our communities I say that we need to develop some common sense instead.
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