Recently I was told how man outwits his nearest mental competitor, the monkey. He ties a small-neck bottle to a tree. Puts bait in the bottle. The monkey can reach in, but with the bait clutched in his grip he cannot get his fist out again.

And he will not let go. So he is stuck, trapped by his stubborn greed.

Every election year in the United States the politicians are catching a lot of monkeys.

We have been baited with promises, pseudo-prosperity and stage money. We have been lured into a trap.

In the past two decades in the United States . . . a beneficent government has sold us a substitute for freedom. It is called security.

Suddenly the gamble was taken out of job seeking. Taxes took all the excess profits–the bonus of business.

We were promised that the government would take care of us if we get ill or get old and that we will never earn less than 40 cents an hour no matter what. Thus we have lost the good sense and moral integrity that set man apart.

If the old pioneering fire has died out of us, if we will hang on to new deals, fair deals and raw deals at the sacrifice of our i-deals, then we deserve to be trapped by our own clutching fingers because we are animals, nothing more.

History, for six thousand years, is the record of free people made slaves trying to get the free lunch out of the bottle.

Remember These Things (1952)

Paul Harvey