For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills;  a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

Deuteronomy 8:7-9

We are getting fat. I am not talking about our bellies, I am talking about our minds.

You have seen the news, socialism is on the rise, down with the greedy capitalist, it is time for the people (not sure which people) to rise up and demand their rights. We deserve, no we demand, equity for all. As Gallup polls recently reported, “Around 23% of Americans now–an 11% increase from 1949–see socialism as a means toward greater equity among people, and 10% think it would bring about an increase in benefits.” What are those benefits? Ellen Chase, an op-ed guest columnist for the Star-editor writes, “Americans are embracing socialist policies. Medicare for all, which was widely portrayed as radical by the mainstream media when Sanders promoted it just a few years ago, is supported by 70 percent of the public, including most Republicans, according to recent polls. Taxing the rich also polls well with most Americans, as do the $15 minimum wage and tuition-free public colleges and universities.”

Wow, 70% of people want free health care? Those seem like awfully high numbers, but what the heck, who doesn’t want free stuff? And if all I need to do to get that free stuff is say how people have way more stuff than me and it isn’t fair, than why not whine about it? Who needs to work when we can whine? Let’s start a chant, and demand, “We want free stuff!” So all those rich guys need to pony up so I can get my stuff. Some people think that is only fair…

But from my perspective, this cry for socialism is just another sign that America is waxing fat.

Just yesterday, at some fancy-smancy progressive conference in Austin, Texas called the “South by Southwest Conference”, the rising socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a special appearance where she said, “We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work, we should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem.”

If you don’t have a job, you are left to die? Huh? Isn’t that just a logical conclusion we have known for years, as 2 Thessalonians 3:10 has said for millennia, “If you don’t work you don’t eat.” But now it seems that expecting people to work is the big problem. I can hear Abe Lincoln now, “Fortnight and couches for all, and perspiration and calluses for none.”

She continued, “We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in,” she said. “Because not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage.”

The bondage of wage. What is that? Oh, that means we are all slaves to the paycheck. So what is the solution? Burn money, forget all debt, close down banks, move into communes where we all drink Guinness together, and learn to vape. If the rich 1% gave more of their money I could some day walk on the moon with my “woke brothers and sisters.”

Here is my philosophical and anthropological problem with all progressive policy and thought: socialists and progressives don’t believe in the depravity of man. By nature people are selfish slackers, if we aren’t kicked off the couch we will wax fat and kick. That has always been the problem with mankind. In the book of Deuteronomy 8:10-14, God is warning Israel as he looks to their future, listen closely to what he says,

“When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.  Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.  Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

I want to make three observations:

(1) When you work hard and become prosperous you become satisfied. Satisfaction is another word for apathetic and lazy. One of the problems with the socialist left is they forgot what got us the riches in the first place…hard work! We are prosperous because we worked hard.

(2) When we have all that we want we start to grow proud. Luxury breeds arrogance. We start believing we deserve the things that we have. Instead of “desires” they become “demands”. Gifts become rights.

(3) When we grow proud we become lazy: We don’t think we need to do what we once did to get what we have, we settle down, we sit and grow fat.

The problem I have with this castigation of work is that it takes away something that makes me respect myself. When I work hard I feel good about me. When I work hard I and I come home feeling a good tired, I forget quickly about the 1%. Who cares about Jeff Bezos, who cares about Bill Gates, I feel good, I sweated and God and me are fine.

But when I sit at home and get fat I begin to whine. I look at what others have and I begin to want. My idle hands make for a wicked mind. Solomon was right,
“So I decided there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then I realized that these pleasures are from the hand of God.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24)

You want a good life? Here is my simple solution: Shut up and get to work! It’s good for you!