Enabling vs. Empowering

Empowerment is a beautiful thing. It reaches into the soul of those who feel a complete lack of control and builds hope. It may be a movement where everyone is involved for a common good, a policy that pulls people from the trenches, or a frustrated middle class guy who discovered blogging. Gandhi empowered and offered a course on passive resistance. Martin Luther King Jr. took that to our country and was instrumental in the Civil Rights movement. Although the momentum that he created was strong enough to carry other groups that were left out, he absolutely deserves his holiday. It was so important that the civil rights movement happened. It strengthened the words of our forefathers and quite simply, is right. Really, judging people by their skin? How truly fearful and archaic. There was another young man working in the trenches of the civil rights movement and he was empowering at the time. Al Sharpton was a soldier of empowerment but now, I will use him to illustrate enabling.
He is still a leader but his power and influence now only comes by holding minorities in a victim role. I feel that Marin Luther King would be quite ashamed of him today. I'm not suggesting that the disease of Racism is gone but Rev. Al is teaching youth that they cannot make it in the country. All of a sudden, anyone who does make it out of poverty is not keeping it real. Any crime or even allegation of one, he is there on his soap box crying racism. He extorts random events and blows them out of proportion. If anyone is led to believe that they cannot overcome barriers, they stop trying and develop a feeling of hopelessness. There are empowering black leaders on the rise. The perfect example is Barack Obama but that brings up another problem; enabling policy.
A huge one is reparations. To suggest that the tax payer or industry should pay people who were not victims for things that dead people did to other dead people is completely bizarre. If it happens, I will certainly go after the Catholic church for reparations. You see, I am left handed. Although I have had minimal struggles (scissors, soda machines, etc.), the catholic church used to force left handed people to use their right. They were even hit for using their left! In Latin, left has the same root as sinister. Should I advocate to have sinister removed from the language or made a crime to use in certain places? My people were oppressed too. As a matter of fact, all of us have a history of oppression somewhere. Should Mitt Romney sue because his ancestors were cast out to Utah? Remember the line from Shawshank Redemption? "Get busy living or get busy dying." One of these is for victims and the other is for survivors.
We need more empowering policy. Have you ever got a overtime check? Here you are putting in extra hours to make some cash to get ahead. The government should not tax that at all but what do they do, they tax it a hell of a lot more! Do they realize that they are that they are fostering a work ethic to do just enough to get by? For the love of God, we have to have empowering policy. I know people who want to work but stay on welfare because they get more money or can't afford to lose Medicaid. When we become an enabled country, and all dependence is on the government, we will become lazy and entitled. Our entitlement is air! Part of the problem with schools is enabling parents to be lazy and entitled. The schools are there to teach, not to raise our children.
When I thought of what I wanted to write about, I did not know it would evoke such frustration. If you were offended, read it again because you clearly misunderstood.