When You Treat The Populace As Children
Betsy Newmark, blogging at Betsy’s Page today, reminds Americans to “keep an eye on the protests in France to let us know what could well happen to us if we keep on the road we are on.” She adds:
“Those protests are close to paralyzing the nation as the people are going on strike and protesting in the streets over a rather mild proposal to raise the age of retirement from 60 to 62.”
She then points to several paragraphs from a Washington Post article posted over the weekend, which provides details about those protests:
“Scattered fuel shortages rattled drivers, and officials at France's main airport warned that some flights must arrive with enough fuel to get back home as hundreds of thousands of people marched Saturday for the fifth time in a month to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age to 62.
“Frequent strikes in the past few weeks have hobbled French trains and airports, closed schools and docks, and left garbage piling up in the southern port of Marseille.
“And now the airline industry is getting worried, after all of France's 12 fuel-producing refineries went on strike, forcing police to be called in Friday to reopen three main depots. The Civil Aviation Authority sent out an advisory Friday night to airlines requiring short- and medium-haul flights to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport - one of Europe's key hubs - to arrive with enough fuel to get home, spokesman Eric Heraud said.”
Ms. Newmark concludes her post entitled “What a culture of entitlement leads to,” writing:
“This is what happens when you treat the populace as children who must be provided for by the government. They won't understand that the gravy train can't run indefinitely - the money isn't there, yet they don't care. What will happen when such changes have to be made in places like California or New York? We haven't had such a paralyzing general strike here in the U.S. in decades. Do you think that our politicians have the nerve to deal with hundreds of thousands of striking protesters in the streets demanding that they get the generous pension benefits that they have been promised? We'll see if Sarkozy has the guts to continue in the face of these waves of protests and strikes. He has Greece's example to give steel to his spine.” (emphasis added)
First Greece. Now France. Then California, New York and Illinois? We’ve been warned!