About Me

Jim Killebrew has 40 years of clinical psychological work for people with intellectual disabilities, and experience teaching, administration, consulting, writing with multiple publications. Dr. Killebrew has attended four Universities and received advanced degrees. Southern Illinois University; Ph.D., Educational Psychology; University of Illinois at Springfield, Counseling Education; M.A., Human Development Counseling; Northeastern Oklahoma State University, B.A., Psychology and Sociology. Dr. Killebrew attended Lincoln Christian Seminary (Now Lincoln Christian University). Writing contributions have been accepted and published in several journals: Hospital & Community Psychiatry, The Lookout, and Christian Standard (multiple articles). He may be reached at Killebrewjb@aol.com.

Welcome to my Opinion Pages

Thanks for stopping by and reading some of my thoughts. I hope you will find an enjoyable adventure here on my pages.



The articles are only my opinion and are never meant to hurt anyone nor to downgrade any other person's ideas or opinions.



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Friday, April 20, 2012

Entitlements


Entitlements; how do we come to believe we are entitled to receive resources that someone else has earned? It is almost sociopathic when you think about it. You have something you worked hard for; I don't have it, but I want it. I believe I am "entitled" to it and because of my entitlement you should be

honored to give it to me.



Now enters a socialist; if you believe I am not entitled to your resources, the socialist simply regulates, makes policy, passes laws, taxes and confiscates my resources and "redistributes" them to those of their choice.



Some say it is Christian to "help those in need" and we should be kind enough to do it. That is true, in the Christian sense we should want to help by sharing what we have to those in need. The difference between Christian giving and socialistic taking is the choice of the individual.

A modern definition of entitlement is "to give somebody the right to have or to do something." Entitlement in modern America has become a perceived "right" to have someone else's resources. The enactment of entitlement in the United States has been fundamentally changed to not only mean those who have an identified, verified "need" for assistance, but now also to those who are "entitled" to assistance in the form of redistribution of wealth. Another dimension of entitlement has come to mean long-term, perhaps even for a lifetime a continual process of redistributing resources from those who have it to those who don't.

 At what point in our history did the concept and practice of entitlement to the resources of others become a "right" in our society?     JBK

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