Today's lesson, boys and girls in Congress, will begin with a story and end with a proposition!  Get out your notebooks and start writing!

Winds of change are a'blowin'!!  It's like somebody exclaimed out loud"--wait a minute!  This isn't right!  This isn't working!"  We stepped back and took a good, long, studying look.

 The crowd began to stir. 

"What is that guy DOING?

"That's MY hard-earned money you're partying with, boys!"

"Are you saying I should unselfishly consent to die while you abscond with everything I earned in honest wages?"

Yep!  Listen to that wind!  We worked hard.  We learned our work ethics from honest, respectable parents and grandparents.  We believed in our country.  We trusted a man was true to his word, just because we knew that if we expected respect, we had to behave accordingly.  When did it become a game, an irresponsible pasttime, to get away with as much as one dared to push the limits of self-respect to, with selfish whims?

We were impressed less with the plain, ordinary, hard working man, and overly awed by the rakish, boy rebel, glamorized on screen. 

We admired him, and didn't we get our FILL of his kind?!!  Our heroes were still heroes as scoundrels--"boys will be boys" was our favorite  phrase of pardon for outrageous indignities.  Even some girls joined in on the careless wantonnesses of the age.  And nothing could make the kids happy again!!

But the winds of time came blowin' and we remembered when we were peacefully happy.  We were distracted by these heroes with all their flauntings when we realized that they were flaunting everything we had foolishly entrusted into their greedy hands for safekeeping.  Our heroes were not so dashing any longer!  They had become so bold as to take away even what we intended to provide for our need in old age, to finance their revelings.  Now they ask us why we would not generously accept extermination--we are selfish to live so long!  Perhaps their consciences still exist just enough to make it uncomfortable for them to see us, daily, in need, because of their greed.

So, take a lesson, you future senior citizens!  Do not be foolish in your youth, lest you lose everything as we did. You marvel at the daring and dashing  and he or she will charm you out of all you have, and then dispose of you as though life were for their convenience only! 

Or perhaps I am selfishly forgetting that I DID, after all, survive gestation!

Now, I address the heroes:

Social Security.  We were told that the money would be put aside for our old age.  At what point did you decide to make the statement a lie?  What was the date you first took money that was not yours to take?  Did you at some point intend repayment of "borrowed" revenue?  Did you seek permission to borrow from the citizens who entrusted their livelihoods to you?  We are required to apply for loans in the real world!   Yet we can't find a single application for your borrowings.  I propose that you return every penny!

Shall we address Health Care, children?  Here's my lesson for today's classroom: 

Not only must you return to your classmate every cent you took, you must agree to accept with deepest gratitude the very same health care you expected your classmate to thank you for.  You took his money and gave him suffering to last to his final breath.  So have you chosen your own fate!  Not one ounce more of care shall you receive than that which you deemed your classmate worthy of!  Thus I propose to you.

Retirement!  It's coming sooner than you prepared for!  Those perks you've had are a thing of the past.  All the security you counted on will be taken to repay what you took without permission or authority...see, you did not read the fine print!  You are a servant!  An untrustworthy servant, at that!  You will not be rewarded for your despicable deeds!  Begone!!  Out of my sight!  You will work in pain.  You will want and need and not rest.  You did unto others who now do unto you!  I propose that you envision yourself before your creator and find him to be the very man you swindled out of his livelihood and his life!

There's the bell!  Tomorrow's assignment:

Justice or Mercy? vs Justice AND Mercy