On this august occasion, as people line up to congratulate you (some armed with gifts and money), and various luminaries shower you with praise while challenging you to reach for the stars, your parents would like to have the floor for a few moments.
First, congratulations on your achievement. As the saying goes, we knew you when. We raised you from a darling little urchin who squalled through the night and dirtied 13.5 metric tons of Huggies; helped you take your first steps and bandaged you up when you fell and skinned your little knees; felt the exhilaration and cried simultaneously when we watched you on your first day of school; savored every Christmas morning we were lucky enough to spend with you; we laughed with you, cried with you, battled for you; and we are positively choked up and overcome with pride at the young adult you've become. So from the people who love you more dearly than life itself, a heartfelt congratulations and thank you for working so hard to reach this milestone.
As you consider where to go from this point, there are a dizzying number of options. Although we are not unbiased, we can say from our own experience that in addition to a diploma, you bring with you something no one else has. You have qualities, skills, gifts, that no other person possesses. In this parent's experience, few things bring more satisfaction than applying one's unique gifts and talents in the service of, and for the betterment of, our fellow citizens. Whether you have a knack for music, art, science, teaching, leading,…our country and our world needs you and your gifts. You have many options in front of you, but to serve your fellow countrymen in a cause bigger than yourself is a huge reward in itself.
Now, as parents, we reserve the right to give you the unvarnished truth, free of sugar coated niceties. We didn't spend all the effort and years loving you and helping you to grow only to see you unprepared for what adulthood brings. So take a moment and look at your diploma. In school, you were identified in large part by your group associations. You were known for being in the band, or in drama, or on the football team, or a member of any number of clubs. You were known as a member of any number of groups. You will notice that your diploma has your name on it,…it doesn't say Band, or Cheerleaders, or Spanish Club, etc. From this point on, you are an individual first, and the quality of the rest of your life will rest on your individual decisions, individual ambition, individual achievement, and individual work ethic. There will be many people, political leaders, union bosses, people in academia and media, who will encourage you to think of yourself primarily as a member of this or that group. Don't fall for it. You are your own person and you have not only the God-given right to act as an individual, but the commensurate and sole responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions and decisions.
A lot of what follows might be things you don't necessarily want to hear, but in a few years you will be glad you heard them. First, your learning phase in life isn't over. As Mark Twain said, "I tried to never let my formal schooling get in the way of my education." The day you stop learning will be the day that you assume room temperature. Stay curious, read books, watch the news, stay informed. Your freedom is a gift purchased with the blood of the very best and brightest your country has to offer. Don't squander it. Cherish it, protect it against foreigners that would do you harm and domestic do-gooders who think they know what's best for you and so try to order and manage your life.
Many of you will try to find your life's partner. Most of you won't realize until you begin working that you already have a partner that will be with you for the rest of your life. That partner won't be there working along side you, but will instead sit by comfortably and wait until pay day. Your new partner will not share in your effort, but will insist on sharing in your earnings. He will be there on behalf of every person who didn't have sense enough to take advantage of the incredible educational opportunities this country offers and chose instead to live on public assistance. Your partner represents every aging hippie who gets a grant from the Nation Endowment for the Arts because they can't persuade enough people to purchase their "art" in the free market. Your agent stands in for every loser who downloaded kids they couldn't afford, every research scientist who is busy studying the mating habits of Caribbean coddle fish, any number of large corporations who made lousy business decisions and want a government bail out, and several foreign dictators with curious and shiny uniforms holding their hands out for foreign aid.
If any one of these people came to you and robbed you, they could be criminally charged and prosecuted. But they don't have to rob you. That's because your new life's partner has complete authorization to take from you the fruit of your labor and simply hand it to any or all of the misfits listed above. You have no choice in the matter. If you resist, this partner can use deadly force to make you comply. Of course, a partner with this kind of awesome power to coerce is very popular with that class of people who want him to use that power on their behalf. The list keeps growing. You really have no choice. Your partner will move in with you, require that you fill out some forms each year, and take more and more of what you produce all in the name of said misfits and to protect their rights. And of course, the more productive you become, the higher the percentage your partner will demand. If you were awake when your teachers discussed a guy named Karl Marx, you might recognize that this "progressive" tax idea comes right from his little mind. Some call this "progress." Others call it theft.
You may ask exactly what rights you have left, given the dire situation I've described. Well, if you watch the news, listen to any number of professors, etc., you might deduce that you have a huge number of rights. The right to a job, the right to be happy, the right to not be offended, the right to higher education, the right to a new car, the right to health care, the right to have other citizens pay for and support a child you decided to download when you couldn't afford it. This is all total horse squeeze! Take a look at the Constitution,…it spells out your rights. Basically, you have the right to live free and you have the right to the fruits of your labor. On the other side of the coin, you do NOT have the right to the labor, property, or earnings of another person.
For example, let's look at health care. You cannot receive health care unless a doctor chooses to give a portion of his time and efforts to you, correct? If he so chooses, he will reasonably expect compensation for his time and effort, just as you will expect to be compensated for your time and effort at your job. You have no right to force him to give his time and service to you for nothing,…therefore you have no right to his time, effort, nor any other portion of his life. Anyone who tries to convince you that you have a right to any portion of this man's life without compensating him is trying to curry favor with your life's partner who in turn will demand still more from your earnings under threat of deadly force.
And while we're discussing rights and the earnings, time, and property your new partner will take from you in order to fund an ever expanding list of rights, let's discuss the people who will benefit from this confiscation of your property. We euphemistically refer to them as the "less fortunate." This is misleading because it implies that those people who live in a decent home, have jobs that allow them to meet their obligations and still live in a measure of comfort are somehow "fortunate." It's as if life were simply one big lottery with winners and losers determined by random chance. Again, this is absolute horse squeeze, and anyone who speaks in those terms is exercising their Constitutional right to be an imbecile.
People who decided against staying out all night partying, opting instead to hit the books and work hard in their studies are not "fortunate." They are hard working. People who decided to continue and finish their education and develop skills that would benefit their countrymen are not simply lucky. They are committed to excellence. People who don't sit around waiting for 5 o'clock so they can punch out and go play video games, but instead work extra, oftentimes so they can pay their tuition costs as they pursue their education are not winners in life's lottery. They are backbone of this country. They are the productive class, and to refer to them as simply "fortunate" is to denigrate their work, their dignity, and their right to the fruits of their labor. After all, it's easier to justify taking someone's property if they got it by being lucky, as opposed to having earned it through hard work, right? Let's not sugar coat it. The "fortunate" among us earned their way. The "less fortunate" became so usually through laziness or a series of stunningly stupid decisions.
One of the harsh realities about the world you are entering is that the harder you work, the more your partner will take from you and the more he will vilify you. Stay in school, develop superb skills, work hard and apply those skills, and you will be maligned by the political class and much of the egg-headed academic class as well. Why? Because the cultivation of envy results in the "less fortunate" clamoring for your partner to hand out more goodies to them, goodies that were earned by you. And the more your partner hands them, the greater your partner's power grows. You will be told that you're not paying your "fair share." Currently the top 10% of wage earners pay over 50% of the taxes, yet that is still not "fair" enough for the collectivists among us.
Having painted such a gloomy picture, I'm sure you are wondering what in the world you should do at this point. I'm glad you asked. Here are a few suggestions:
* Register to vote. Become informed and cast an informed vote. If you don't know what's going on, then please don't vote. We've already exceeded our quota of idiots, goons, welfare queens, and misfits at the ballot box.
* When you do vote, pay particular attention to House and Senate races. Congress controls the purse strings and with it the appetite of your life's partner, so focus sharply on that.
* Remember, you are not entitled, nor should you wish to be entitled, to another person's property or any other portion of his life. Writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic, historian Alexander Tyler observed that once the public learns that it can vote itself money from the public purse, a democracy's days are numbered. Don't reach into another man's pocket. You have no business there.
* Use your unique abilities and talents to your advantage and that of your community. To willingly serve others in this way is a blessing,…to be coerced into such service is slavery.
* Revel in your uniqueness.
* Go the extra mile. Decide to produce and excel rather than be part of that wretched herd called the "less fortunate."
* Always know that your parents love you dearly and want more than anything else in this world for you to be happy.