One Sunday when I was 7 I turned the TV on and flipped to our regular show—Walt Disney. I plopped onto the carpet and decided to watch—in spite of groaning that it wasn’t a cartoon. I saw in vivid color cars from the 1950’s and 1960’s driving down a road where cute bears stood by car windows and climbed all over each automobile, eating from the hands of humans who were only too willing to feed them.I squealed and begged my dad to take us to Yellowstone. I wanted to feed those bears…and in my way too rich imagination, I could just picture myself finding a bear cub and bringing him home! I was animal crazy growing up, bringing home Garter snakes and frogs and stray dogs—even cats, in spite of the fact that I was horribly allergic to them. I just had to hold to the idea that I could sneak a baby bear home.
But then my bubble was burst. Dad smiled, and informed me that they no longer allowed people to feed the bears at Yellowstone. I was crushed, the devastation showing all over my face. How horribly unfair! I could barely whisper “Why?”I’ll never forget his explanation.
Long ago, he began, Yellowstone not only allowed but actually encouraged people to get close to bears and feed them. He and my mom had even been to Yellowstone once during this time, and had experienced the thrill of feeding these wild animals.
He explained that feeding the bears had been a tradition from the time the park had opened. Before people had cars, they would go in wagons to a feeding area, and sit on benches to watch the park rangers feed bears that came out of the wooded area around them. Then, with the advent of the automobile, people had the thrill of driving through the park themselves and being approached by multiple bears, begging for a handout. It had been a delightful time for all.
But beneath the surface, a horrible fact was bubbling to life.
The park rangers first began noticing it in the early sixties. Up until that point, mother bears would teach their offspring to approach humans for food, but they were also teaching their cubs to fish, hunt, and forage for food. Something ominous began happening in that decade, though. Mother bears were no longer teaching their cubs to fish, hunt or forage. In the sixties, it became obvious that the mothers were now teaching their children that food could come from only one source—human handouts. If there was a time that the park was closed or few visitors came by, the mothers and their cubs would go hungry, eventually resorting to stealing from resorts and cabins. It didn’t even occur to them to try fishing or foraging, and why should it? They’d never been taught to fend for themselves.
The rangers were horrified. They had assumed that centuries of fishing, hunting, and foraging were deeply embedded within the bear, and that somehow the bear would instinctively know how to do so even if it didn’t have to do it. But the rangers had forgotten the cardinal rule of the animal kingdom: get as much as you can with as little effort as possible. It is why animals will steal a kill from one another or eat a fallen animal rather than expending all of that energy for a meal.
Yellowstone put an immediate stop to its “feed the bears” policy, and began re-educating the bears to fend for themselves. It was a hard go; after all, it had been many decades since they’d had to do so. Some of the bears died because they just couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do what a bear must do. It was hard and painful at first. But after a few years, they were making it, and stronger and better than before, because now their diet was what a bear’s diet should be, and because now they were getting the exercise and activity that a bear should have.
I looked at my dad as he finished, and he smiled at me.
“So you see, Resa, what at first seemed horrible to you was actually a kindness. Had the policy of feeding the bears gone on forever, who knows what might have happened to them? Had there been a disaster or the park closed, every single bear would have died—all of them. And I want you to notice something particular here: it wasn’t until the rangers found that the mothers were no longer teaching their young to fend for themselves that they became alarmed. When the mothers were teaching the cubs to hunt, fish, and forage, as well as taking from the humans, it wasn’t an emergency. But when the mothers began to drop the hard ways in favor of the easy way…well, that’s when the red flags began waving.”
I lowered my head. I knew this was heavy stuff, but I thought I understood. I knew that my mom and dad taught me right from wrong, the good way from the bad way, and even though I was young, I understood the “why’s” and “what’s” behind it all. Had they not done the hard thing and taught and disciplined me, I would have grown up a criminal, always in trouble, and always in danger.
I learned two lessons that day: the importance of a disciplined life, and the importance of a mother’s teachings.
That example is a glaring one now, as we are faced with electing two potential “Rangers.” Ranger Kerry believes in the continued handout, giving us “bears” food when he feels like it, forcing us to become dependant on him and his government rangers or we will surely die. Ranger Bush believes that we should be free from oppressive rangers and allowed to sink or swim on our own, depending solely upon ourselves, our imagination, our ambition and determination. Ranger Bush believes that our parents know better than the rangers how to teach us to fend for ourselves.
We have seen in Yellowstone what happens to a species when it is given what it wants instead of what it needs. Let us look at the glaring similarities between that and our current welfare system. After all, humans are part of the animal kingdom, too, and it is in us to find the easiest way possible as well. But our welfare system is killing us, not helping us. We have seen it most glaringly among black families. We now have 4 or 5 generations of mothers who have lived and raised their children solely on welfare. And what happens to their offspring, who know no other way? You guessed it; their children aren’t taught to work and find a way to make a living, to use their talents and brains and claw their way to the top. They’re taught to wait by the well-traveled road for the hand out to feed them, or if that doesn’t come or isn’t enough—and it never is—to go and steal it. Blacks are once again slaves, this time to their own political party—the Democrats and their “tax you feed them” policy.
Welfare has been at the very least as dismal a failure as the “feed the bears” program at Yellowstone—not because it gives people food, but because it takes from people their choices, their ambition, their imagination, their intelligence, and instead turns them into drains on society or criminals who are then put into prisons to once again become drains on society. It is never enough, and never will be, because it was never meant to be the sole source of income; it was meant to only be a temporary supplement. As with the bears, we have allowed welfare to become our lone food source, and it is enslaving everyone into a role that no one—on either side—wants to play.
What had seemed horrible to me as a child was now clear, correct, and far more merciful as an adult. I no longer think as a child, but it seems to me that the lefties do. So we all have a choice—do we think as children, or do we grow up?
You go to the polls next week. You have a decision to make. One decision means our destruction as a society just as surely as continuing to give food to the bears would have meant theirs. The other choice means that we have to be re-taught to fend for ourselves, but it also means that much of what is taken from us now to feed the non-working bears will be returned to us, thus making our own existence easier to insure. We already pay half a year’s salary to the government/rangers, something that is vile and evil and just plain wrong, and we’ve allowed it to happen. Enough of that. I say it is vital that we reverse the wretched tax direction, because as it is going now, every one of us is going to have no choice but to turn to government for our handouts, which in turn makes us their slaves. Our only chance for survival—and that of our offspring—is Ranger Bush, and you damn well know it. After all, we’re not children anymore.
Keep the faith, bros, and in all things courage.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”