On Catching Wild Pigs

A good friend of mine, Mike, forwarded this to me with a suggestion that I pass it on. I'd seen it before and liked it but that was before I started this blog. It is so very appropriate for this time in our country's history. If you look, you can see that there are at least two sides of the fence already there and if we are not careful, one day we will hear the gate slam.

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in his class. One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story , he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.

"You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you place a fence down one side where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate shut on them. The wild pigs have lost their freedom and run around and around inside the fence, but can't escape. Soon they just go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it by now that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, and they simply accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax cuts, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths:

1) There is no such thing as a free lunch.

2) And you can never hire someone to provide a service for you
cheaper than you can do it yourself.

If you agree that all of this wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to others to ponder.

Those who think the free ride is essential to their way of life, will likely just delete this email.

But God help us all when the gate slams shut.

Author Unknown

An interesting if apocryphal story but one that bears repeating. Thomas Jefferson worried about the same thing when he said, "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."

Beware those who would tempt us with more government in our lives. When you cede your freedom to the government, it is almost impossible to retrieve it.

Food for thought.