I’ve been listening to the radio today in the car and various reports concerning the demonstrations throughout the country supporting certain demands for illegal immigrants. I know the protesters represent a great number of different groups including all those socialists who traditionally use May 1st as the “Workers’ Day.” But more than one of the “man on the street” interviews were with Latinos who invoked, in one way or another, sentiments of entitlement. The fact that they were here illegally (knowingly), yet demanded certain rights and privileges initially struck me as strange. But the more I considered the question, in some ways it kind of made sense.
And here’s where I coming from. In this country, in a difficult situation, many feel that they are entitled to some relief. If you have a bad outcome in surgery, or if you are injured using a snowblower on your roof (don’t laugh, I saw a ticket on a snowblower warning the customer not to use the blower in this manner) or if you just spill very hot coffee from McDonald’s on your private parts, some feel that they should get paid. We have developed a culture of entitlement. It manifests its perversion in many ways. For example, around here, it is not uncommon for one driver to cause two or three lanes of traffic to back up, because the driver wants to make a left hand turn through those lanes. There is not a bit of shame or embarrassment about assuming the right of way from dozens of other drivers so the turn can be made. There is some sense, I think, that the wayward driver feels it’s OK because he’s entitled to turn left.
We, as a culture, nurture this sense of entitlement. Every driver who patiently endures the right-of-way hijacking passively sends the message that it’s fine to turn left through three or four lanes of rush hour traffic, holding all those other folks up, because you need to turn. Even when we act compassionately as a society, we sometimes send the wrong message. Take the case of compensating those who were murdered on September 11 in the Twin Towers. Before the debris had been removed, the government formulated a plan to compensate the victims. Not just Pedro who was supporting his eight kids by working as a janitor in the basement. No, we paid millions to the families of executives who perished. The compensation formula was based on earnings so that those on the top floors earning millions received many millions more from the government. Why? Why should the family of someone making say $10 million a year be compensated? What message does that send? These people have plenty of money. But we reinforce the notion that when there is some distress, when something bad happens, there should be relief. We are entitled to it. And not to mention all the other entitlements created and sustained by the government including this president in the Medicare prescription drug plan and the billions in farm and corporate subsidies.
And so when those who here illegally demand relief from their illegal situation, perhaps they have adopted our culture in part already.
