Let me ask you a question. What do you think about the kid who gets everything he wants, but has nothing but complaints? You know the one. He got a car on his sixteenth birthday (it's the wrong color). He goes to the Caribbean for spring break (he was on the wrong side of the island), Colorado to ski (the snow was so much better last year), and might even made it to Paris in the summer (all it did was rain).

But nothing really makes him happy. He gets too loud, too drunk, too stoned, and if he drives after and gets caught, he'll get bailed out, and complain he can't drive for six months, but probably does anyway.

Now let's take this guy: Single mom, mostly gets enough food, tickled with a new pair of sneakers on Christmas (the rest is hand-me-downs), as soon as he's old enough, takes an after school job so he can have a little bit of spending money, and some of that goes to helping out at home.

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The kid does what he needs to survive, he gets some help from his church, or the salvation army, or his neighbors, and gets that complaining isn't going to make his world any better.

Now obviously I have painted two extremes for a purpose. There are people across the spectrum who are thankful, and also those who grumble.

But tell me, which one would you trust with your money? Which one do you want to hang out with? Which one do you think will make the most of the opportunities that come his way?

And Which Will Make the Better Citizen and Neighbor?

I'm thinking it's the one who has some purpose and meaning. The kid who is handed everything has a lot more trouble finding something to work for. The other one has a reason. Maybe it starts with survival, but it grows from there. This person comes to know himself as one who can and will make the difference in his life. He is the one who must become resourceful, who will invent ways to improve his life, who will find his own gifts and put them to good purpose, who may just appreciate the contributions of those around him, and develop a pro-social world view.

People look at Congress and wonder. From the outside, it looks like a spoiled children's shouting match. I'd guess most don't look to most of us like they really get us. I've heard that it wasn't always this way. And I think part of what is lost to this generation is a galvanizing national experience. We were once all on the same side, or at least enough so. These were the generation that had been through the world wars, the generation that had lived under the threat of nuclear Armageddon with the Soviets.

We knew we had differences, but they were small in the face of what we had in common, and we were more willing to be civil with each other to work them out. Back then, we had Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, instead of competing echo chambers calling the other side idiots.

We've broken down as a community, or as a community of communities. If you look back for instance to the late 19th and early 20th Century, you'll see a profusion of St. Luke's, St. John's, and St. Joseph's, places like the Sisters of Mercy, the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, and countless sanitoria and homes for the sick and infirm.

You'll see a strong Salvation Army. You'll see churches and synagogues that create communities and tend to their flocks. You'll find a thousand orphanages in 1900. These were supported primarily by private funds or religious organizations.

People had some level of accountability to the organizations that would help them. The organizations didn't always do it well, but they were closer to the people; they had personal connections, and they understood it was charity, not entitlement.

Until the Government Decided to Take Over

Now can you imagine Colonel Maggie (Salvation Army) telling a young woman she'll make out better with her newborn if she doesn't get married? Colonel Maggie knew, and research has long since backed her up, that a two parent home keeps kids in school, and out of prison, and give them better prospects.

But since the 60s, single women have been told they'll make more without. And the telling result is that many of these people's children are over-represented in our courts and prisons.

And we got Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown court was right, establishing separate black schools was wrong. And Topeka's response was the correct one. They integrated attendance districts, attended by neighborhood, and mostly moved forward.

But then, we went overboard. We forced busing. This didn't always have the effect we desired. White flight occurred. The accountability present in community schools became weaker. People were not neighbors with their kids' teachers or school administrators and staff anymore.

From my own experience, there were black kids in my school, but I only had one in my classes, and his family was from Jamaica. This was simply segregation inside our school.

But this isn't the big problem. The problem is that every time the government steps in to fix things, things get more messed up. Millions spent on busing could have bought us better community schools, schools accountable to those in the neighborhood.

On the health care front, we now have the most expensive health care in the world, but not the best results. It's estimated 30% of health care costs are the administration of health care. Add to that regulations that save us 170 billion, but cost 340 billion to administer.

But it's worse. We've started an age of entitlement. The support the government gives to single mothers is expected. When things go south, we expect the government to bail us out with extended unemployment.

We've stopped being resourceful. We've stopped thinking about how we can take care of ourselves and others. And worse we've gotten greedy and mean. We want what we can get, and too many of us think it's the government who should provide.

And when individuals start to feel entitled, the people running corporations do as well. Maybe, just maybe, those kids who got the cars are the ones running our banks and insurance companies and convincing our Congressmen and the Fed that they are too big to fail.

Maybe the problem is we've all become too entitled, and that's not what good government is about, especially not at the federal level.

Instead of figuring out how to live, and doing what's necessary, too many of us look to the government - a Congress with very poor confidence ratings, entrenched bureaucracies without much accountability, run by people overpaid and far from those they should be serving, running up our debt, and getting a very poor return on our capital - and somehow expect it to take care of us.

And we have just enough, but no meaning, and little hope. And we have an opioid crisis, and educational attainment not on a par with our investment, and untenable student debt, and a population not qualified for the work that is available.

And then to make it worse, we create our little echo chambers and listen to those who spout our own rhetoric and get farther and farther away from the family, community, and common purpose that should bring us together.

The solution, I maintain, is to get the federal government out of our lives. We should be the knowers and creators of what is best for us. To do that, we must trust those closest to us - where we actually can have real input - to help us get things done.

Federal regulation should be limited to those areas where we must band together to face the power of those who would threaten us or harm the world we live in. Maybe if you're too big to fail, you are too big. If you can manipulate markets to enrich yourself at everyone else's expense, maybe we should have something to say about it.

And maybe it starts by not screwing up the playing field in the first place. If we hadn't guaranteed student debt, maybe we wouldn't have made it non-dischargeable, and maybe schools would actually have kept their costs in line.

If we hadn't put an emphasis on home ownership, and created incentives for dangerous lending practices, maybe we wouldn't have had a housing bubble, and 2007/2008, and the last ten years, would not have looked the way it did.

My point is that - when you are left to your own devices - you'll find the best way to take care of yourself. When a Congressman in Washington thinks he will help you out, in the long run, you'll end up worse off.

I don't want you, or your kids, to be worse off because government tried to help you. I want to create the conditions where you can best help yourself.