The Path of Least Resistance

Across the 21st century American landscape, millions of families, middle class families, are enjoying fruits from seeds sown by past generations. Through imagination, hard work, perserverance, and faith, our American predecessors tilled, planted, and cultivated not only the soil beneath their feet, but the freedom-enriched terrains of manufacturing, business, finance, technology, and a myriad of other propitious fields. Today, although many of us work very hard, we are largely drinking in the pleasures of material blessing harvested from the investment of others.

And yet, despite our abundance, we Americans have generally become a lazy lot. It is not so much that we don't work hard, but rather that we don't invest our minds in understanding the ideological groundwork from which our benefits spring. Intellectually, many have chosen the path of least resistance.

Our mental idleness manifests itself most clearly in the arena of politics. As our nation finds itself bogged down in an unpopular Middle East war, anti-war opponents lower themselves to slogans and name calling, unable and unwilling to engage in meaningful dialog and offer viable solutions. How much easier it is to chant "peace," point fingers, and cast blame, than it is to work together towards a real plan.

For those supporting the so-called "rights" of illegal aliens, the best weapons they can muster to counter the position of those who believe that illegal means illegal, are defamatory labels such as "racist," "bigoted," and "xenophobic." Again, rather than engaging in grounded discussion, the path of least resistance, the slippery slope of slander, is their chosen course.

What of those who have illegally braved our southwestern deserts and eluded our border guards? Despite the difficulty of such a journey, it is still easier than staying home and fixing one's own country. It is simpler to harvest, or even glean the fields of others, than it is to plant and cultivate one's own. Illegal aliens, too, have chosen the path of least resistance.

Not one of us is immune to the temptation of choosing the path of least resistance. But a watercourse that follows easiest path, can only become a crooked stream.