Representative Don Young (R-AK) is a horrible person.
Young offended a lot of people on Tuesday of this week when he told a crowd of high school students that suicide can be blamed on a lack of support from friends and family.
Young compounded his awfulness yesterday by saying that suicide can be blamed on big government; because the people of Alaska have become entitled free-loaders.
Asked about the “lack of support” comment, Young expanded on it and added that suicide in Alaska didn’t exist before “government largesse” gave residents an entitlement mentality, according to an audio recording of his senior center appearance. [...]
“When people had to work and had to provide and had to keep warm by putting participation in cutting wood and catching the fish and killing the animals, we didn’t have the suicide problem,” he says on the recording.
Suicide comes from federal government largesse “saying you are not worth anything but you are going to get something for nothing,” he says.
If only we could all go back to being hunter-gatherers, we could end this suicide business.
This began when Young accused high school administrators of “coddling” their students after the suicide of a fellow classmate and it somehow transformed into Young yelling at the clouds about entitlement.
Don Young is man who should have rode off into the sunset about a decade (or three) ago.