| Letters
to the editor from this week's Chronicle:
To the Editor In our area, by the same definition as “African” Americans, live German Americans, Swedish Americans, Norwegian Americans and others. Yet we don’t call each other by those names. We refer to ourselves as Americans because we share the same culture. “Did you know that?” I asked my daughter. Our culture is respecting personal property and earning and keeping the fruit of our labor, and through the supreme law, the Constitution, we preserve this culture by forbidding actions that harm our and our neighbor’s health or safety or property. We also share the same language. We don’t speak German, Swedish, Norwegian, or British….we speak English. We share the liberating culture of Christian-Judeo roots that encourages honesty, discipline, hope and faith which encourages us to seek higher ground in our self and our character. In order to create structure to our culture we created common documents for those who wished to live here and adopt this culture. These documents are the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. I told my daughter that for many years we had no immigration into our country, the United States, to allow people that immigrated here to learn our culture and assimilate because it required mental, emotional, and physical work to become an American. For many, personal risk and insecurity that is part of true freedom is difficult to understand. It’s a concept they have to get used to and internalize, and adopt. Even the President of the United States and members of Congress and the Courts should have had personal risk for what they earned and they should not esteem their flesh is better than others…thereby thinking they are immune from risk or insecurity and above the law. Although the Scholastic news topic was about Mr. King’s efforts, it caused me to wonder if many immigrants calling themselves by “nationality/ethnicity-American” haven’t actually adopted this unique culture yet, particularly the risk and insecurity portion that is part of earning freedom, and that’s why they refer to themselves as “______nationality” Americans. But for those people who believe and have internalized this culture, they are Americans, regardless of ethnicity or race. They are a tough, salty, good people. Sadly today there are still people, important people, embarrassing themselves by dividing people by color or language. The real problem wasn’t or hasn’t been color. The real problem has been and is arrogance; a problem of comparison and thinking one has a right to live off the fruit of others and esteeming their flesh better than others. They forget that to become truly free each person at some point has to conquer through work the 2 fears of risk and insecurity. But by believing and honest work, they find that through their steady effort begins to emerge within themselves the culture of respecting private property, their and other’s safety, and respecting the fruit of their and other’s labor instead of the culture of laziness, blaming, and coveting the fruit of others. And they see that initial risk and insecurity are really the door to liberty. Real Americans don’t see or get hung up on ‘color’. Instead they see weak character and strong character, an honest and industrious person versus a lazy, blaming person, a ‘wanna be’ vs the real deal. Thank goodness that most people in our area have desired and adopted our unique culture, language, and are Americans. Scott Perrin Cottonwood Work at ??? Thank a Farmer!
Of course there are many back-yard gardeners, but they produce only a small fraction of the food that their families consume each year. Even full-time farmers are hardly self-sufficient; they specialize in certain crops or livestock and must purchase most of their family’s food as well. Think about it. Since most of your time would be devoted exclusively to producing enough food to last through the year, hardly any time would be left to do anything else. Now imagine everyone else doing the same thing. Nobody would have time to produce the other products and services we all currently consume which are only possible because we rely on professional farmers and ranchers to grow our food. Everyone’s standard of living would be drastically reduced. Essentially we would go back to the “good old days” when nearly everyone had a cow, a plow and a mule. Not only would you need to grow your own food, you would also need to supply the feed for your livestock. Each household would therefore need enough land to support that production. You can quickly grasp how this would be far less efficient than our current system. Today, those who are the best at producing an abundance of safe, affordable food do so for the rest of us. According to the USDA, farm and ranch families comprise less than two percent of the U.S. population. The other 98 percent of us are then free to use our time to produce the literally hundreds of thousands of products and services that make life so enjoyable today. Amazingly, the typical U.S. household only spends about 10 percent of their disposable income on food, leaving 90 percent for housing, entertainment, clothing, transportation and all of their other wants and needs. Contrast that with India that spends 51 percent on food, Spain 25 percent or New Zealand 20 percent. Spending more on food means fewer other purchases and therefore, fewer jobs in those sectors. If each of us had to produce all the food our families consumed all year long, our diet would be lower quality with much less variety than is available today. Do you even know how to grow a grapefruit; much less have the correct climate and soil conditions to do so? How would you guard your crops and livestock from a myriad of pests and diseases? How would you effectively store your produce so it would last throughout the winter when you could not actively grow food? How would you realistically produce olives or crabs or pistachios or cranberries or thousands of other items you now enjoy? Work at ??? Thank a Farmer! |
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