The Charlie James Show reflects on consumerism and societal responsibility.

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Full Transcript Charlie James: You know, they... we always hear that we are a, uh, consumer-driven society. That we've stopped making things here in America. And it... that's... that's just a fact. That's just absolutely a fact. But, have we become so accustomed to prosperity that we forgot where prosperity came from? There's a really great piece over at The American Thinker called "The Consumption God," and the argument here is pretty simple. America has become a nation of consumers—not just consumers of products, but a consumer... consumers of civilization itself. Civilization itself. Think about that for a second. We consume the roads. We consume the electricity. We consume technology. We consume freedom. We consume prosperity. We consume the institutions that previous generations built. But we don't take time to think about what it took to create any of it. So, the author makes an important distinction here. A consumption culture isn't simply about buying too much stuff. It's a belief that personal satisfaction is the highest good. That comfort is something you're entitled to. That if you want something, you should have it. And if you don't have it, somebody's got to be responsible. Maybe it's the government. Maybe it's capitalism. Maybe it's rich people. Maybe it's somebody else's privilege. But could it be possible that life involves sacrifice, responsibility, and delayed gratification? Previous generations were taught that you had an obligation beyond yourself: family, faith, community, country, work, responsibility. Your parents told you that you don't always get what you want, and somehow that was considered an important lesson. But today, we've created an entire culture about: "What about me? What am I getting? What am I entitled to? What does society owe me?" And here's the irony: the more we get, the more we expect. The more comfortable we become, the more uncomfortable we become with anything that inconveniences us. And the more prosperous America becomes, the easier it is to forget that prosperity is not automatic. Somebody had to build the factory. Somebody had to invent the technology. Somebody had to take the risk. Somebody had to work the night shift. Somebody had to work over 40 hours a week. Somebody had to raise the kids. Somebody had to go off to war. Somebody had to pay taxes. Somebody had to build the institutions. And somebody had to make sacrifices so that we could inherit something better than they had. And that's the part we've lost. We've confused the fruit with the tree. We enjoy the fruit, but we've forgotten to take care of the tree. And I think this helps explain something that we're seeing politically. Why does socialism suddenly sound so attractive to some Americans? Why do young people look at a country with no... with unprecedented wealth and say, "The system is fundamentally unfair"? Well, if you believe prosperity is simple, and it's simply something that you're owed, then inequality becomes intolerable. If somebody has more than you do, the question becomes: "Why don't I have it?" And if you don't understand how wealth is actually created, the answer becomes: "Take it from somebody who has it and give it to me." That's the temptation. But here's the problem: you can redistribute wealth. You can't redistribute character, discipline, innovation, and sacrifice that created the wealth in the first place. As somebody that said, if you took all of the money in this country and you divided it equally between everybody else in this country, within... within just a couple of years, the rich would be rich again, and the poor would be poor again. And that's really the warning of this article. Every generation inherits something that it didn't build. We inherited roads we didn't pave, laws we didn't write, businesses we didn't create, technology we didn't invent, and freedoms we didn't fight for, and a nation that previous generations sacrificed to build. So the question is, are we go ...

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