In ancient times lessons were easier learned if there was a story involved.  For us in modern times, stories still work to make a point but we don’t hear them very often. 

For example, the story of “The Ant and the Grasshopper” goes something like this: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs, dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. The moral of the story is it’s always better to be prepared.

In a modern version we can still learn a lesson from it. The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs, dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. All the major television networks show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper  next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

Americans ask: “How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?”  Kermit the Frog appears on a major talk show with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” Political lobbyists stage a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.”

Prominent congressmen exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.  Finally, the Equal Employer Opportunity Commission drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

We can take this story to heart and learn not only the lesson of being prepared in emergencies but to be wary of too much government in our lives. What appears to be a federal government doing the best for the people is in actuality a federal government doing the best for themselves.

Loxley resident Valerie J. Steimle is now the author of four books. Her latest, “Dogs, Blogs and Hobbits: Writings from a Widow’s Perspective” is available on Amazon.com. Contact her at valeriesteimle@yahoo.com, visit her website at www.stregthenyourhome.com or check out her blog at www.valeriesteimle.blogspot.com.