Following the hand that provides for us

Your Sept. 21 issue, page 10D, shows a photo of an art project in Germany of 100 blue sheep, symbolizing “everyone is equal and everyone is important.”

It is seemly that in Germany, where modern socialist thought was developed in the 19th century, a sculptured flock of sheep representing “equality” would be on display. As sheep could hardly represent “equality in liberty,” to use a term Alexis de Tocqueville wrote 170 years ago, those sheep surely represent, as Tocqueville further wrote, “equality in restraint and servitude.”

In that picture, I see sheep ready to follow the Judas goat, much as the Germans followed their paper hanger in that same Germany during the 1930s and into the 1940s. The people followed Adolf Hitler enthusiastically, as his government provided money when people got married, money when a child was born, money and more money for the voting class, although, by then, actual ballot-type voting was no longer in vogue in that Nazi (National Socialism) land.

Out of context today? My distant cousin in Germany wrote recently, “We Germans like our socialism.” My point? Too many Americans like their national government to be in charge of handouts. Same thing.

Dick Hansen

Cedar Rapids