CALLING ALL GROWN-UPS
May 24, 2005

by Joe Sobran

[Originally published by the Universal Press Syndicate, 
January 1, 1998]

     Arthur Koestler told the story of an old priest he 
met during World War II. Fascinated that the man had 
listened to thousands of confessions and heard countless 
intimate secrets, he asked him what he had learned about 
human nature.

     The priest was naturally reluctant to discuss the 
secrets of the confessional, even in the most abstract 
terms. Finally, though, he offered one generalization: 
"Basically, nobody ever grows up."

     Amen. When my mother died last June, one of the many 
emotions that surged through me was an odd feeling of 
sheer unreadiness. I wanted to say to her, "Mom! You 
can't die yet! I haven't finished growing up!"

     After all, I was only 51.

     Koestler's priest never met my mother. She grew up 
early. I never knew anyone so self-reliant, but so 
willing to be relied on by others. Until she died, I 
didn't realize how deeply I felt I still depended on her. 
That feeling never quite goes away.

     One of the fascinating things about celebrity 
scandals is the sudden revelation, repeated over and over 
again, that so many famous, powerful, seemingly 
self-sufficient people have never grown up. What had been 
the secrets of the diary are thrown onto the front page.

     After all, adults are supposed to be making some 
kind of effort to be responsible and self-sufficient. But 
many people don't even try to grow up anymore. The low 
birth rate in modern society suggests that they would 
rather be children than have them. And the growth of the 
welfare state is an index of how constantly we are being 
invited to let others take responsibility for us.

     Why do we talk about "responsibility" in government, 
when government itself has become a device for shirking 
and concealing responsibility? The more prosperous we 
become, the more we hear about poverty and the alleged 
necessity for the state to take care of those who have 
been "forgotten" or "left out." You'd think that life 
were tougher for us than for our ancestors on the farm.

     As the state relieves us of responsibility to our 
parents and children, it increases our responsibilities 
to itself. You may divorce your spouse, desert (or abort) 
your children and abandon your parents, but your duty to 
pay taxes is absolute. There is no divorce or separation 
from the welfare state, till death do you part (and even 
then, inheritance taxes will eat up much of your legacy).

     Maybe you don't have to support the children you've 
begotten, but you're going to support other people's 
children, and pay their way through college, from coast 
to coast. The natural ratio of responsibility is askew.

     The socialist phenomenon, as Igor Shafarevich has 
called it, takes many forms and many names. But it's a 
phenomenon of rich societies, not poor ones.

     Poor societies can't afford to support a large 
parasite class; the great majority of people are doomed 
by necessity to be hard-working peasants. When you have 
to produce food for your family with your own hands, 
refusing to take responsibility is not an option.

     It's when a society produces a huge surplus of 
wealth that the parasites multiply and become a powerful 
force, demanding to be supported and exaggerating their 
hardships, while politicians, feeling their pain, cater 
tenderly to their "needs." Always at someone else's 
expense, of course. The fewer the peasants, the more the 
parasites.

     Not coincidentally, rich societies also produce 
large surpluses of leisured theoreticians to provide 
rationales for those who won't grow up. A large part of 
the parasite class is dedicated to "education," a luxury 
that should be privately paid for, though typically 
advertised as a necessity that must be subsidized. This 
is why so many intellectuals are on the side of "the 
poor," which in practice always turns out to mean the 
state.

     Frederic Bastiat wrote that government is "organized 
plunder." It might be added that a politics geared to 
this kind of government is organized whining.

     I suppose we all have an "inner child," a whiner and 
shirker to the end. Nothing wrong with that. But it was 
one thing to lower the voting age to 18; it's another to 
extend the franchise to the inner child.

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