If we keep changing the rules in the middle of the game the good players will quit.

I think it’s probably a good idea for everyone to be involved in sports when they are young. I’m talking about little league football, baseball, or even golf. Games like these provide an education in playing by the rules, expectations, and fair play. From the seemingly continual whining going on from the twenty-somethings currently “occupying” cities around the country, it’s pretty clear the only youth sport many of them played was soccer – the babysitter-cum-sport where all the kids just run up and down the field chasing the one that happens to be near the ball – where everyone gets a participation trophy for just showing up.

America is supposed to be a democracy (technically, a representative republic) in which we vote for those who will represent our voice in government. The basis for which is the United States Constitution – and it served us pretty well for about the first 150 years. It is our supreme law of the land; not just when it suits your position or cause. So you would think that if the Constitution is the rule book, we would all have received a copy, been instructed on how the rules work, and what is necessary to modify it or create new rules.

Now, I have no quarrel with someone who wants to change the rules. But let’s call a time-out first and make sure that there’s enough support from the rest of the 300 million or so players. I mean if we all decide that yes, it’s a good idea to take a considerable portion of earnings from the most productive of our society and dole it out to anyone who chooses not to be productive or to cover the health and welfare of the poor and elderly; by all means, I’m good with that. But the executive and congressional fiat that has bypassed this process for decades is really getting old – and expensive. The majority of funds – nearly $1.9 trillion in 2010 – that the government collects through taxes and other fees are already devoured by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Welfare. Where’s the money going to come from to pay for all these new make-work programs and health insurance for 22 year-olds? Is this what you signed up for when you entered the workforce?

Now it seems as if the current youth of our nation – who have been coddled and filled with delusional self-confidence since birth, want, no expect for life to be as rosy in adulthood as it was in their childhood. They seem unprepared for life’s hardships, trials, and tribulations because few have any experience in this area. They have grown up in an age of PlayStation games and cell phones with little want. The recession of 2008 is the first taste of economic hardship for many of the millennium generation and it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the recession of the late 70’s and early 80’s. They graduate from college with their degrees in English, poetry, and basket-weaving and are amazed to find they are unemployable in the technology-filled world in which they were raised!

So these self-absorbed children join the ever-growing class of people in this country expecting for someone else to pay for their mistakes or inability to plan properly instead of sucking it up and dealing with it. They refuse to take a job in their chosen profession because the salary is lower than they expected or they might have to – gasp! – move out of their parent’s house or even to another city. Or if they do have a job, they complain about not making enough instead of getting an additional job to supplement their income.

Then they complain about the lack of opportunities which shows their complete lack of reference. The differences in the available opportunities offered to this generation as opposed to generations prior are too incredible to even list here. The advent of the Internet alone has opened the world to everyone with a connection. Just finding available jobs and getting your resume in front of potential employers today is exponentially less work than when my peers and I began careers. There wasn’t services like Career Builder or Monster; we found jobs through networking and reading a lot of newspapers. And getting a resume to the right person in the organization you wanted to work for was no simple task either.

Maybe this explains why the Baseball World Series viewership continues to decline. Too many kids would rather sit on the couch texting on one hand with a video game controller in the other while their parents tell them how great they are.