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entitlement basically says, “You owe me prosperity, government. You owe me.”
    Yes, this was written before 2008 .
    All the more reason why Europe is in such deep trouble even as President Obama seems to be taking us exactly in its direction .
    Is it inevitable that America must head down this road? Not by a long shot. Keep in mind this discussion I had with the good Dr. Charles Krauthammer on The Factor after some college students at UC Davis went wild over a tuition increase:
            O ’ REILLY : The irony here is that some of those students want America to be an entitlement society, but whenthe money runs out as [it has] in California, they run amok.… Charles, how bad do you think the entitlement society in America is right now, and is gonna get?
            KRAUTHAMMER : Well, judging from those young people, who appear rather agitated that they are not having their college education subsidized enough, I say it’s getting out of control. Because remember, who pays the taxes that support their college education? Three quarters of Americans have no college degree. I think the answer to your question is a little bit complex. I think the majority of Americans don’t want to give up the entitlements they already have, but I think the majority of Americans don’t want to add onto it, and to become like a European social democratic society.
            O ’ REILLY : Now why is that? Because the taxes then rise so high that individual achievement is robbed and that the American dream shrinks because you just don’t have the cash to do it because you’re giving the government the cash. Is that the reason?
            KRAUTHAMMER : That is the reason, and what we had was a spontaneous uprising, if you like. A peaceful one, of course, in the United States. The Tea Parties, the town hall meetings … all said very loud and clear, “Yes, we like our Social Security but we are not going to add onto it with a new healthcare entitlement. We know we’re going over a cliff with taxes and debt, and as a resultwe want to stay where we are, stay Americans with some protections. We’re not going to get rid of the New Deal, or even the Great Society or Medicare, but no new stuff.” And that’s what the fight over healthcare is all about.
            O ’ REILLY : It is. It is about that and about smaller versus larger government. However, the younger people that we saw out in California, they have a different view when you look at the polling about healthcare. The younger the American is, the more likely they are to support it. So that tells me that the new generation wants the government to be a nanny state.
            KRAUTHAMMER : Except that the new generation is going to get older. And they’re going to have a family, and they’re going to have kids, they’re going to have payments, they’re going to have a mortgage and they’re going to pay taxes. And they won’t like the taxes. Those kids out there aren’t paying a lot of taxes. And as they become adults, they are not going to have the same political attitudes as they had at eighteen, when you’re wild, you’re free, and subsidized.
            O ’ REILLY : Why do you think people in Scandinavia, who are just about the same as Americans—Scandinavians come here, there’s no difference basically—why do you think they want the nanny state in places like Sweden? Not Norway so much, but Denmark, Sweden, France—Franceisn’t in Scandinavia—what is the mentality that Western Europeans have that they want to be taken care of?
            KRAUTHAMMER : Well, remember they’re not the same as us because it was the more independent ones, the ones who didn’t like the strictures of government, the regulations, the religious oppression, who came here. This spirit of being independent and not wanting to be controlled by the government is something that is intrinsic in America, it’s the essence of America, it’s what