Don’t Start Feeding the Squirrels

Via Rightgrrrl, we find Kate McMillan writing in Canada’s National Post wondering who we as a species learned to be such a bunch of pansies.

By "famine", I do not mean those 24-hour fruit-juice-sipping adventures in group narcissism devoted to curing the problems of that continent-wide parade of dysfunction known as "Africa." No, what I have in mind is a proper food shortage of the depth and duration that drives the creative homemaker to taste test the wallpaper glue, while contemplating which of the $3,000 Labradoodles goes first into the stew pot.

"Dig deep, darling. The pup's at the bottom."

A taste of deprivation could restore the word "crisis" to its original definition, resurrect "endurance" and "stoicism" from the vocabulary dustbin, along with the long-lost distinction between "threat" and "nuisance."

It would push back the powerful "if it saves one child" lobby, along with their toboggan helmet police, school lunch analysts, anti-bullying program directors, and playground equipment removal teams. They'd be forced to shelve plans to open the family car to random search by health department inspectors with tobacco-detecting dogs. They'd return to tending their own needs and wants, instead of regulating away those of everyone else.

A half million 20-somethings would emerge from their parents' basements, if only to search for food.

In the mean time, they might occasionally come up to find rolling papers and Doritos, but don’t bet on it, unless they major in do-gooderism something a beauty pageant contestant would say they want to do when they “grow up”.