This post is a version of an email that’s been circulating the internet for years. It’s a great parody of the entitlement mentality poisoning the western world, especially America.
OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
Barack Obama exclaims in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and he calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.
The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be very, very careful how you vote!
I'm a Christ-follower, compelled by my faith toward reason, which points directly toward conservatism. This world's daily onslaught of lunacy offends my intellect and senses, so this is my venue to blow off steam.
you’re cute. i fear your voting record. maybe you should spend more time reading what is actually going on in the world pertaining the lack of humanity given this current administrations record, than writing about how bad the other side of the pond is.
your story is fantastic however, and i compliment you on the analogy of the grasshopper to anyone who fits that comparison, such as dead beat dads, or the majority of welfare recipients. thank you for your candor. D
I’m just curious, drewr. What IS going on in the world?
The thing that makes this parable so great for me is that I’ve seen/heard those news channels carry those types of stories for real… and I’ve seen Jesse Jackson pull that manner of nonsense for real… and I’m pretty sure Obama, perhaps as recently as the Dem debate, has called for higher taxes on citizens who are currently prospering (and I guess, for some inexplicable reason, anyone prospering is bad). You see… the parable is funny because there are so many elements of truth in it. The reason why it seems one-sided is because 95% of the entitlement mentality comes from one particular side of the political aisle… appealing to the “lower” class that they are being cheated by the “upper” class – the oldest trick in the book.
And I’ve also been across the Atlantic and seen what poor people REALLY look like.
“higher taxes on citizens who are currently prospering” – excepting themselves of course. How many millionaires are in congress? I’m generally not in favor of punishing the rich, but I’d be willing to make 535 or so exceptions…
Yeah, I could agree with that!
I think tax day should be the same week as election day – that would provide a better natural feedback mechanism for filtering out candidates who don’t want to lower taxes.
Rush is always saying that if employers no longer deducted all the taxes from yiour paycheck before you even saw the money, and instead, everyone had to send a check to the IRS every quarter for that amount, that all those tax and spend politicians in Wahington (and Albany) would go down in defeat at the next election — and I agree. Great story, son.
Very clever and would be even funnier it it wasn’t so sad. Here in Australia we also have a culture of entitlement. Criminal rights rule and boat people (illegal immigrants) live a more comfortable life than many senior citizens who have lived and worked here all their lives.
What’s even worse is that voting over here is compulsary, otherwise no-one would probably bother.
Wendy
I have heard a lot of similar stories. One comment I heard many years ago is still true.If you take all the money from the rich and distribute it amongst the poor, then in about 10 years the money will be back in the same pockets.It does not help to take from the rich and give handouts to the poor. Instead educate the poor in money matters so that they can look after themselves.Another news story I saw was on the children of rich American families (The icons of American business) were getting special tuition to help them manage their exorbitant allowances.Fiscal intelligence is not always inherited
I agree with the old version 100%. If I’m stuck in the cold because of poor planning then I won’t lean on anybody to warm me up. However, I don’t see that happening since I take full responsibilities for my actions!
Rawls said no-one has a right to be better off than anyone else except if by being better off they benefit the least advantaged members of society-might be something in that
Humorous as it is, it somewhat captures the political reality. However, it is also over-simplistic and leaning too much on conservative political ideology.
Nietzsche said ‘exploitation’ is a very polite word for what the universe does with its inhabitants. He was having one of his many bad days, probably, but it’s high time we cleaned up that dirty word in our internalized lexicon of word-feelings. To live is to make the best we can of the resources available to us. That can be done ethically by merely holding sacred the concept of personal property.
There appears to be no bottom to how resentful we can become over those that appear to have it better than ourselves. Until individual grasshoppers see the light, I’m afraid no amount of politicizing one way or another will positively change the nation’s mental health.
Heartening, though, to see people like you trying to change us with the written word alone.