Reservations About Reservations

I have reservations about reservations....Indian (or Native American) Reservations, that is. A story in this morning's paper about the potential loss of satellite-based internet service on the Navajo Nation's reservation has me thinking about these anachronisms.

I think the United States needs to figure out a way to move past these enshrinements of socialism. Yes, yes. We took their land (oops, not me, or my people...once again. Maybe another apology is in the offing....). But that is the story of the world...civilizations rise up in places where there previously was a different civilization. People are displaced. Sad, but true.

But it is now 2008. There is no real reason that the US government should spend so much money keeping so many people in what amounts to cantonments of socialism. Life on the reservation is one continuous handout after another from government, or in other cases, handouts from the proceeds of casinos and government. The incentive to leave the reservation, to strike out and join the society that encircles it, is deadened by the incessant drip of government largess into the veins of a population besotted with entitlement.

Reservations may have seemed like a good idea once, but they have outlived their purpose.