Unconsidered Luxuries

Americans enjoy many luxuries; this is true, but what kind of luxuries are they? When we hear that word, luxury, we generally think of something generated by material wealth, like big houses, boats, and cars.  But I contend that we take for granted luxuries that have nothing to do with wealth. Consider a few of them:

1. Not having to bother to vote.
2. The ability to abandon a wife or husband with ease.
3. The security, real or imagined, that comes from the government's bottomless bucket of deficit spending and social programs.
4. To live and conduct our affairs, official and personal, as if there were no God.
5. The ability to craft a God that aligns him/her self as with our desires.
6. The denial of absolute morality.
7. The conflation of compassion to an occasional trip to the ballot box to cast a vote for the politician who promises to give more of your neighbor's stuff to the poor .
8. An education system that trashes it's own country, including the tax payers who are footing its enormous and bloated bill.
9. Unlimited and anonymous access to any pornography the wicked mind can conceive of.
10. Promiscuity without the consequence of shame.
11. Ignorance of the Constitution.
12. The denial of the existence of borders.
13. Ignorance of history.
14. Pacifism without fear of harm.
15. No-expense-too-high-for-someone-else-to-pay environmentalism.
16. The ability to borrow seemingly endless amounts of cash from those who can't refuse... the unborn.
17. The pretension that evil doesn't exist.
18. The belief that this world could be perfect, and will be some day once the right people are in charge and have unlimited power.

Of course, there are costs for these luxuries, including material costs, that eventually come due and must be paid... one way or the other. There are also many ways the reaper may reap his due, paid in ways that are unassociated with materal "wealth". Here are just a few examples:

Opportunity-- Commerce depends on morality. You expect that whatever it is that you've exchanged your wealth for will operate, perform of be whatever you were told. As morality increases, trust decreases. As trust decreases, the ability to do business becomes more cumbersome. And, as the ability of business becomes more cumbersome, it not only becomes more expensive. And by business I don't mean large corporations. No, I mean you making a simple purchase.

Government Solvency--Our governing bodies at every level are bankrupt. We have thus far enjoyed the luxury of passing off the trial of compassion to government. But people in the governments are not interested in compassion. What they are interested in is keeping their jobs and foisting the cost of their "new" ideas and social experiments gone bad onto a yet born generation. But these governments are now on a collision course with reality. The payday for these promises of security is now looming large. Still, any attempt to make a course correction or to apply a little common sense are met with howls from the sedated populace as we discover that masses of people have become compassionees.

Unraveling of Society--Single parent families, for one, are taking their toll on the social fabric. Social institutions that once provided a nurturing environment for offspring that would be productive members of society have been impugned and dismantled. Now, any insinuation that out of wedlock births, or behavior that leads to them, is a moral issue are met with contempt and the offered solution of killing the child. Suggestions of real solutions are called extremism.  You can't impose your morality on others we are told. But still, morality is imposed, by way of payroll deductions as financial payments are made to fund some of the luxuries listed above.

There is also the luxury of expectation. We now have an expectation of these luxuries as a given, like the air we breath, along with the luxury of prosperity.

This brings me to the last luxury worth mentioning. This luxury will be ever persistent; exacting payment long after the other luxuries have been paid for and are collecting dust on the shelf of fading memories. And that luxury is self-delusion.