Now this is frightening

I thought Joe Pyrah's story on indigent deceased was one of the scariest of the year.

Funeral home director says:

"People want what they want, and think they should get it without paying for it," she said. And if they can't do that?

"Ethically they just walk away from their loved ones and not think twice," Sundberg said. "It's just a change in the human element."

She said a woman came in recently pleading poverty despite owning a home and having an income of nearly $60,000 a year.

The story says it's a nationwide trend.

Have we as a nation become such moochers, such freeloaders, so greedy and needy, that we can't even summon the moxie to take care of these basic responsibilities?

That scares me. Go a few trillion into debt -- that can be paid off. But if we have become just serfs, begging the government for everything, then we're done. Finished. Kaput.

That's what conservatives are really, and rightly, concerned about: that our willingness to assume responsibility is being whittled away by big government.

And note this: It's part of the collapse of values. More and more, we just don't care about anything but our own pleasures. If we can't taste it or touch it, too bad.

Then too we'll be serfs, as long as we're well fed.