Compounding our problems, the West has been in an extended ideological slide of its own. It is not just that our elites have become unmoored from the traditional anchors of our ethics and morality (religion, tradition) but they have adopted as their ideological underpinnings a new variant on the Marxist mantra. We have gone from "to each according to his need, from each according to his ability" to a more nuanced and contemporary "to each according to his desires, from each according to his willingness to donate (sometimes under coercion) his time, energy, and money." Most young people of my children's generation have thousands of mp3's on their iPods and yet have paid for none of them. In my own field, Medicine, the idea that the "consumer" should actually pay for their health care has become an outmoded object of ridicule. |
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