The Circus of the Greedy and Moronic

The news media is saturated with coverage of the birth of octuplets in California. Rightfully so, as already these eight children have, as a complete group, survived longer than any other group of octuplets born in America. Yet most of the coverage is no longer about this amazing birth. Rather it is focused on the mother and her right to have these children.
By now some of the basic facts are well known. The mother, Nadya Suleman, already was a single mother with six kids. All of her children have been conceived through IVF (). She spent the past six years on disability. She currently does not hold a job.
All of this has created outrage across the country. Shouts of “How could she” and “She must be nuts” echo the landscape. I watched on television as person after person griped vociferously about taxpayers being forced to shoulder the financial burden for these children.
I too am outraged. I find this situation to be close to reprehensible. But I am equally outraged by the overwhelming response condemning this mother. Not because it isn’t warranted, but because it is hypocritical.
This case only stands out because of the number of children. But single women constantly conceive children in this country that they cannot possibly provide for financially. In fact, some young girls attempt to achieve pregnancy knowing it will lead them to be emancipated from their guardians and provide them with numerous government services including housing and food.
We live in a country where you can smoke for fifty years and then Medicaid and Medicare help pay for your cancer treatments. You can buy a 500,000 dollar home you can’t possibly afford, and then declare bankruptcy when the inevitable happens. Even now the government is contemplating spending nearly a trillion dollars (an amount incomprehensible) of taxpayer money to bail out industries and individuals, many of whom are in financial straits because of their own greed.
All of these are by-products of the same problem. A huge chunk of Americans, from the government, to the wealthy, to the poor seem to believe it is okay to live beyond your means. We no longer seem to be a people who can delay gratification. We must have it, and we must have it now. Do whatever you want, and someone will come bail you out. In fact we have come up with ingenious words to make it all sound palatable.
Instead we should call these things what they really are. To go into debt never planning to pay it back is not bankruptcy, it’s stealing. To expect your neighbors and fellow citizens to take care of you no matter how you treat your body is gluttonous and greedy. To reward citizens for making horrible moral and ethical choices by providing them increased government services is incestuous. And for an individual, business and especially a government to recklessly spend beyond its’ income is absolute moral failure.
I’m not saying I have the answer to these problems. I just wish we would talk about them more honestly and consistently. So if we are going to complain about taxpayers having to foot the bill for one mother and her fourteen children, we should complain anytime the government foots the bill for greedy and moronic choices. That would at least be consistent. Problem is most of us don’t have the kind of time it would take since the government tends to be the ringmaster in the circus of the greedy and moronic.