George W. Bush’s sense of inadequacy is richly deserved--the product of a life spent as a spoiled rich kid who never had to work for anything, with a habit of breaking things wherever he turned, and leaving other people to pick up the pieces.

This is hardly a typical life pattern for cops or soldiers.

Moreover, any soldier or cop who belittles himself for not being an entrepreneur urgently needs to learn to lighten up.  The fact is, opportunities for entrepreneurship in the contemporary economy are extremely limited, and continuing to shrink with each passing day.

This does not mean that people have to be devoid of initiative and enterprise.  On the contrary, these are characteristics that can be displayed in almost any environment.

In my own experience, cops and soldiers have actually tended to display more of these traits than their counterparts in the private sector.  In a corporation, if work is difficult or unwieldy without a particular piece of equipment, people tend to protest or drag their feet until the company provides them with it.  In the military as well as in law enforcement, I’ve repeatedly seen people go out and scrounge up what they needed--or if it was simple enough, build it at home in their own garage or basement workshops.

How different could this kind of behavior be from Bush’s hypocritical parasitism?