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Every time I visit Indonesia, which is the homeland of my wife, I am amazed
at the amount of progress this country has made since the previous visit.
Though it is predominately Muslim I think the rest of the Islamic world
could take some tips from Indonesian Muslims. I don't know that Muslims by
and large will ever consider persons of other religions as equals but
Indonesian Muslims do seem to have a respect for non-Muslims in at least
the basic degree of a fellow human which has the same right to breath this
air as anyone else. With this mutual respect the Indonesians make great
strides in living standards and national achievements such as highways and
public utilities.
One thing I am particularly aware of in Indonesia that it seems we have
lost in the U.S is personal responsibility. If we Americans go in debt way
over our heads and lose our house we think Washington should punish the
rich bankers that loaned us the money and then bail us out somehow. If we
want to be a single parent and have thirteen or sixteen children we should
be able to do so whether we have the financial means to do so or not and
yes of course other peoples tax dollars should not only pay for the
hospital bill but also for the housing and feeding of these children. If
someone is breaking into my house I should allow that person to do so
because if I shoot them I may get thrown in prison myself or at the very
least sued by the person who was breaking in. I could go on but the point
is Americans have lost the ability to reason what is true and what is not.
By our twisted neo-socialist endeavor to be "fair" to everyone and
everything under the sun we are becoming helpless and eventually hamstrung
by this pathetic attempt to lift the poor and down trodden up from the
depths by the sweat and money of hard working citizens.
There is no welfare system in Indonesia yet somehow people find ways to
live and survive. There is no Social Security in Indonesia, yet there is
not multitudes of old people on the streets starving and dying by the
thousands. People in Indonesia do have stronger family structures. What our
so called "progress" has done for Americans, is devalued the family as the
cornerstone of any successful society. Thus if our sister is out of work we
just tell her to go sign up for welfare, if our parents need help we drive
them down to the Social Security office and drop them off. In Indonesia
there is a feeling of personal responsibility to care for fellow family
members and this seems to instill or at least reinforce a feeling of
personnel responsibility as an individual.
The contrast can be seen by the commercials of lawyers on T.V which prompt
anyone who has suffered an accident to sue regardless of the circumstance.
It can be seen by a victorious Democratic administration which has not once
to my knowledge put any responsibility for the financial crisis on the
individual American which not only was offered ridiculous loans by
irresponsible bankers but themselves acted irresponsible by taking them.
Our lack of personal responsibility can be seen by the way we get outraged
by the government not acting faster when a hurricane comes and causes us to
be stranded without food or water for days, even though that same
government told us to get out of the area way before the hurricane hit. No
it is not our fault, our problems are never our fault they are always due
to circumstances beyond our control and it is always the governments place
to "fix" those problems for us Americans.
I might be more inclined to agree with this philosophy but the facts are
that we handed the care of our poor over to the government and it did not
get fixed. Now we have a new welfare class in society which are born and
die in care of the government never having the natural motivation of self
sustaining care to help them become productive citizens. We handed our
retirement plans over to government yet the government is no better at
saving for our retirement than we were and now Social Security is always on
the verge of collapse plus Americans no longer save themselves for
retirement which causes a poorer America in general. We placed the medical
care of our elderly in the governments care but this to is breaking the
back of our country and now to fix it we will create a lower standard of
health care by having that same government take control of the health care
system (sooner or later it will have complete control). Nothing we have
handed the government to fix has panned out yet we still want to pass off
what should be our personal responsibility to the government and in the
process become more and more locked into a system which as in Communism
hands it's people they're jobs, pay, health care, and pretty much whatever
you will have in life, handed to you by the government.
Indonesia for now is not starry eyed by an impossible utopia that will
never be and as far as I can tell most people have a feeling of personal
responsibility for themselves and they're family. We in America have to
some degree lost that and unless we get it back countries such as Indonesia
will soon pass us by and it is my prediction that Asia in general may soon
become the economic powerhouse of the world, in some part because of the
many countries such as Indonesia where the people depend upon themselves
for they're success or failure and do not look to the government to dole
out the benefits of citizenry from the country's coffers.