The American dream

Besides Biden’s promised welfare, why are illegal immigrants swarming across our border? Some might say to live the fabled American dream. Defining the American dream is as difficult as defining the dreams of every American. Webster’s defines it as follows: “A happy way of living that is thought of by many Americans as something that can be achieved by anyone in the U.S. especially by working hard and becoming successful.” My question is: How can an American achieve the American dream when the progressive democrats want to remove any challenge to living by putting everyone on welfare? There is no more hard work involved to earning a living. There is no challenge, or even an incentive, to do better in life when your check will be in the mail every month whether you get off the couch or not. Why not open another beer, and catch the afternoon shows? It doesn’t matter. This was not what made America. America was made by doers, innovators, and inventors that lived their dream.

A major problem with universal welfare would be education. Why get one when you don’t have to compete for a job? Without a basic education, there would be no innovation or invention. An inventor needs the basic knowledge of reading, math, and science just to be articulate in their field.

Imagine if the Ford family was living off welfare while Henry was tinkering with watches and steam engines on his father’s farm in the 1880s. Would he have felt the need to invent the two-cylinder engine, and the affordable automobile for all Americans? Maybe, maybe not. By all accounts, Henry Ford was a driven person with a personal dream of success.

Let’s jump ahead to the early 1900s, and the Wright brothers. There wasn’t welfare then, either, but imagine if there had been. Would Orval and Wilbur had felt the desire to build an airplane if they’d felt satisfied living at home on their guaranteed income? Maybe, maybe not. Similar to Ford, The Wright brothers were obviously extraordinary men who wished to see their dreams achieved. What is more important, the dream or the money made achieving one’s dream? Sometimes money and power are the dream.

We must look at this question of innovation and invention from both sides. What great inventions from socialist or communist countries have changed the world? The Russians brought us gulags, re-education camps, killing fields, purges, and vodka. They’re also credited for putting the first man into space, but that was accomplished on the work of German scientists captured after World War Two. Similarly, the inventor of the rocket which placed the first American on the moon, Werner Van Braun, was a German scientist who surrendered to the Americans following the war. Neither group lived on welfare, but was driven toward their dreams by need. More to the point, socialist states do not create or inspire, because there is no need to achieve any measure of success to earn a living. There is no initiative to get off that couch if the inventor is not one of those extraordinary men with internal drive.

There have been no greater times of innovation and invention than the times of the direst need. Think of all the innovation and invention created during two World Wars. Most of the inventions created during the wars were about more efficient methods of killing human being like tanks, machine guns, poisonous gas, and war planes, but many contributed to our lives today. Such daily items like sanitary napkins, Kleenex, zippers, and stainless steel. The invention of blood banks occurred during the First World War. How many lives have been saved by the ability to save blood for future use? The real question is: Would the need for storing blood have existed if the country lived on welfare? Probably not. Cellucotton, the absorbent cotton-like material Kimberly Clark Corp. eventually used to create sanitary napkins and Kleenex might have been invented based on feminine demand, and the needs for a company to turn a profit. It is doubtful we would have seen such inventions like stainless steel or water-proof trench coats. It was during World War Two that the killing methods went into overdrive to kill fifty-million people. There were also more innocent inventions like the Slinky toy, the aerosol can, and the Jerry can for carrying fuel and oil. Where would we be today without nylon, the Internet, radar, and jet engines? One of the greatest inventions of war which has saved millions of lives was Penicillin. Finally, atomic power was developed during World War Two. Nuclear reactors may soon be creating all our electricity if Biden gets his wish of ending the use of coal.

I think it can be said that human beings escaped the caves and evolved due to their dire need to survive. Had the animals built cave men fires, and then offered themselves up as food, we’d probably still be living in caves. This is obviously an extreme example to prove a point, but not that much different than putting everyone on welfare with a guaranteed income. If we want to continue to invent, advance, and evolve as a species, we need to end welfare or at least install a work-for-welfare program.