John Wooden's Ultimate Life Puzzler

Wooden asked this puzzling question, "Why can’t we realize that it only weakens those we want to help when we do things for them that they should do for themselves?"

This is the most confounding error in judgment of all. Why would we deliberately weaken people we care about? The line between individual acts of kindness and compassion and becoming an atrocious enabler is tricky. In America we crossed it fifty years ago. The result is cancerous attitude towards work and responsibility that has metasticized in the minds of the majority.

The cartoon parody (above) best exemplifies this intellectual cancer.

Since Lyndon Johnson managed to turn America completely in the wrong direction (and even much longer ago in Europe), cultivating a sense of "entitlement" in the populace, to the point of grotesque dependency, has been the dubious crowning achievement of an ever-expanding federal government. Greece is now a perfect example of how recklessly Western politicians have manipulated the voters into choosing the wrong path. Still the question lingers.
"Why can’t we realize that it only weakens those we want to help when we do things for them that they should do for themselves?" The answer is actually very simple. It is because powerful elected officials have the only jobs in the world where being completely ignorant of this basic fact actually helps them keep their jobs....instead of being fired. What a pity that our education system seems incapable of teaching this most fundamental principle so we would know not to vote for these frauds.