PrintMarch 5, 2009
Cold Cheese Sandwich Compassion
The "village" is dishing out free lunch. Unfortunately, the natives are restless because the only provision on the collective cauldron is a "cold cheese sandwich." School districts all across America are under attack over the sandwich, fruit and carton of milk provided gratis for students without lunch money or those who fail to pay the tab for charged lunches. The initiative is called the "cheese sandwich policy" implemented as an effort to prevent children from going hungry, while insuring the district's budget remains unstrained.
Tearful mothers pleaded with school districts to stop singling out children by feeding them cheese sandwiches. Students are vowing, they "...will never eat sliced cheese again" after having to eat them as a "courtesy meal." Cheese sandwich anger is palpable and is being interpreted as a "singling out or punishment" of poor children.
One example is the Albuquerque New Mexico school district, which is the fifth largest in the country and should serve as an example to the rest of us of what happens when governmental type entitlement programs are instituted to meet needs that are deemed "rights" for large groups of people. What occur are "cold cheese sandwich" programs considered adequate by dispensers of the privilege, but below the expectations of recipients?
We live in a deluded state of entitlement in this country. Our perceptions of what we deserve don't quite line up with our bottom line. Not being able to meet the expense of a house doesn't stop some of us from purchasing one, forgoing the mortgage payment, blaming predatory lenders for our predicament and expecting the government to come up with the monetary solution. This type of attitude is indicative of the practice of sending children to school without lunch, running up a delinquent tab, expecting kids to be eligible for free hot pastrami on rye and then protesting when all they get is a "cold cheese sandwich".
We were once a nation that assumed responsibility for the needs of our own family. Never would we expect our food or housing to be provided by anyone other than ourselves and we worked hard as proud providers. Over the last twenty years, we're become a country that views itself as "entitled" and deserving of governmental provision of shelter, transportation, education and of course health care. We're sucking our thumb, curled up in the fetal position on the lap of a lactating Nanny state. However, when the government provides what is standard government colostrums we're shocked, appalled and dissatisfied with the stipulations.
We've eagerly elected politicians who are "changing" America into something against the grain of who and what we've historically been, yet we're still expecting what we've been used to -- just minus a monthly statement of any kind. Sorry comrades it doesn't work that way. American's are about to find out that "cold cheese sandwiches" are government cuisine and like it or not we're going to have to gag down dry sandwiches, warm WIC milk and a mealy, rotten apple if we don't wake-up in a hurry.
It is going to be very interesting to see the reaction of American's, who are eagerly awaiting single-payer Universal Health Care and who falsely imagine that for "free" they will have the same access and quality they presently enjoy These are same hoodwinked individuals who think they can skip mortgage payments and remain in their homes or overlook lunch tabs but still demand personal size pizzas and Acai-Blueberry-Pomegranate Vitamin Water without charge.
We are an impatient nation griping on deli lines, exhibiting road rage when caught in traffic, avoiding the inefficient DMV, walking out of the diner if the waitress dawdles and buying stamps online because it takes too long at the US post office. Surprisingly, this is the same group that thinks Universal Health Care is a panacea in waiting.
Wait until Americans get a "cold cheese sandwich" slapped onto the lunch tray of reality.
"Many Americans look to Canada's Medicare program ...ignoring the very real costs that system imposes ... long wait times that can stretch into months or even years of painful and detrimental delay. Chronic conditions can become acute, with increased morbidity and mortality, and curable malignancies may become incurable" (Waiting Your Turn, Studies in Health Care Policy, Fraser Institute, October 2008).
If parents are complaining to school boards about children's free lunches wait until curable cancers become incurable because of rationed treatment.
The same citizens who are complaining about "government cheese" sandwiches will be begging for the right to eat one when Universal Health Care restrictions decide the menu. Wait until loss of personal freedom is driven home to dying people who, while waiting for treatment, crave a gooey, grilled cheese sandwich and are then forced to pay increased taxes on the meal because butter, cheddar and white bread are considered detrimental to health and responsible for putting undue strain the health care system. We are in grave danger of finding ourselves sitting around gumming government "cheese sandwiches" because a socialistic Sugar Daddy reprimanded us for the candy stuck in our teeth costing us our dentures.
The witch doctors are entering the village and we're on the precipice of giving government unprecedented control over our lives, which I promise will nurture a response similar to Danessa Vigil's over her free cheese sandwich when she said, "... it makes me feel like I want to throw up"
Wouldn't it be better to insure that the choices available to us are dictated only by our own resources, driven by personal responsibility and initiative? The American people should reevaluate the cost of what the federal, state or local government considers free and if they don't want to have their entire life transformed into a giant, "cold cheese sandwich" maybe they should bag their own lunch and accept responsibility for their lives.
