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The Del Walmsley Radio Show – The Modern Version of "The Ant and the Grasshopper"

“The ant works hard in the withering heat and in the rain all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference…

… and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.”

Two Versions

Well, my friends, I want to read you something that I got in an email. It’s long; it’s involved; it’s in-depth, but I think it’s worth it because it just so exemplifies the way I see the world. So I would like to go ahead and do it.

It says, “A question, food for thought. Here’s a story about the ant and the grasshopper.” There’s two versions, one, the old moralistic version and two, the second newer version. Goes on,

“The ant worked hard in withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays all the summer away. Come winter the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies in the cold. Moral of the story: Be responsible for yourself.”

Sharp Contrast

Now, the modern version. “The ant works hard in the withering heat and in the rain all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

“CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to the video of the ant in a comfortable home with a table filled with food. America’s stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that in a country of such wealth the poor grasshopper’s allowed to suffer?

“Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing it’s not easy being green. Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news station films the group singing We Shall Overcome. Then Reverend Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down on one to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Green Czars

“President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant and make him pay for his fair share.

“Finally the EEOC drafts an Economic and Equity and Anti-grasshopper Act retroactively to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs. And having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government—the government’s green czar—and given to the grasshopper.

“The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his freeloading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while he’s in the government’s house—which as you recall just happened to be the ant’s old house—as the house crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared into the snow never to be seen again.

Everything for Nothing

“The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident and the house now abandoned is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle the once prosperous and peace-loving neighborhood. The entire nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

“Moral of the story: Be careful how you vote in 2010. I sent you this because I believe you’re an ant and not a grasshopper. Make sure that you pass this onto others. Don’t bother sending it onto any grasshoppers because they wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

Boy, is that not just the perfect—absolute perfect—example of what’s going on in this world right now? I mean it can’t get any more perfect than that. Here it is, folks, the grasshoppers they want everything for nothing.

A Common Mantra

They’re not willing to work; they’re not willing to save; they’re not willing to do anything that the ants do, and then they wonder why the ants get ahead. So what do they do? They legislate to take everything away from the ants.

Well, my friends, can that persist or will that not eventually send the economy, send the entire nation into poverty, into just a disaster? Because how many people are going to be willing to work if you keep taking everything away from them?

Now, this is a common mantra that we’ve heard forever and ever and ever, and yet we continue to be mesmerized by the slick words of politicians who completely try to demonize people who make it and living by being successful and who are constantly trying to level the playing field as they take the money out of your pocket and put it in somebody else’s.

American Again

My friends, I want to thank the people of the east coast today for voting the way they did. They made me believe I’m American again. That there are actually people out there that care, that actually will not allow these people that are in government right now to dominate us and to take and do things that we don’t want them to do.

When 60 percent of the people don’t want a health care program, they lie to us and tell us that yes 60 percent do. When everybody out there knows that it’s a lie, they continue to lie and misrepresent the facts and cover it up and go after people that tell the truth.

I probably won’t be here tomorrow. You’ll probably see me gone because I even stepped up and said something. Now, I think America stepped up and said something yesterday, something that should have been said a long time ago.

Abundance Mentality

But the problem is it takes time for people to realize that they have given up their freedom for safety, given up their freedom for a promise that can’t be true. You cannot run a country based on the zero-sum game theory.

The zero-sum game says that for me to have a dollar you have to give it up. That is not the way you run a country. That is not the way you grow a group of people into the most prosperous people in the world. No. You change your mentality. Change it to the abundance mentality.

The abundance mentality says that one plus one is 11. And there’s massive amounts to go around for everybody, because if you do not look at it that way, there will be massive unemployment. You will starve out the very people that are willing and able to go out and create the type of environment necessary for businesses to grow. But no, it takes time.

Duped

It takes time before you realize that you’ve been duped, that you’ve been promised things that can’t be true. Wow. Think about that. How often in your life have you just woken up one day and realized you’ve been duped? Well, guess what? You’ve been duped.

These people are creating massive, massive, massive debt. And they are going out there and redistributing that debt to their little cronies—not to anything that would be productive. I mean I remember Obama talking about building a better country and putting people back to work. I don’t see the stimulus creating any jobs. I don’t see it saving any jobs. I just see it’s money being paid to the cronies.