Copywriting
Free Corn
By JR Hafer
An economics professor lecturing at large well known southern college had several exchange students attending his class last semester. One morning during a session in class the professor noticed one of the exchange students, a young man who kept stretching and moving about in his seat as if his back was paining him.
The professor inquired of the young man as to what might be the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He continued, by saying; he had been shot while fighting the communists in his native country. The Communist movement was trying to overthrow his country’s government. They wanted to install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, “Sir, do you know how to catch wild pigs?”
The professor thought it was a joke, smiled and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and spreading corn over the ground”. He continued to speak, having everyone’s attention now, “the pigs find the corn and begin to come and eat the free corn every day. When they start coming every day to eat the free corn, you put a fence down along one side of the place where the free corn is. The wild pigs get used to coming to eat the free corn you have spread out each day. When they get used to the fence, they return and begin to eat the corn again. Later, you extend the fence to the other side, of where they are feeding on the free corn.
They get used to the fence and start to eat the free corn again. You continue extending the fence until you have all four sides of the fence completed with a gate in the last side. The pigs are so use getting the free corn to eat, eventually they come through the gate to eat the free corn… then you slam the gate and lock the whole herd inside.
Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around frantically trying to find a way out of the enclosed compound, but they are caught and can’t escape. Soon they quit trying to get out and go back to eating the free corn and ignore the fence. They are so used to having the free corn that they have forgotten how to forage in the forest for themselves, so they eat the free and easy corn just like pigs will, and eventually they accept their captivity.”
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of give-a-way programs such as supplemental income, tax credits for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments given to farmers not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms – just a little at a time… just like the wild pigs lost their freedom.
One should always remember: There is no such thing as a “free lunch”! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. All of this wonderful government help is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably be upset at me for saying it, but God help you when the gate slams shut!
Always listen closely to what the politicians are promising you! Just maybe you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America.
The late Adrian Pierce Rogers who was an American pastor, conservative, author, and a three-term president of the Southern Baptist Convention, He said: “You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The Government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for … that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it”.
Thomas Jefferson said “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”
Think about it !
JR Hafer © Copyrighted June, 2008