Entitlement

Entitlement can refer to a legal code (or clause), a social contract or a legally or socially sanctioned expectation.

It can also refer to a narcissistic frame of mind aided and abetted by a culture, that indeed largely defines a culture.

It can refer to something as trivial as a gratuity "earned" by a faithful patron of the corner pizza parlor, as large as a retirement pension or as comprehensive and ephemeral as "happiness" or even "eternal salvation." The late noted German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoffer, referred to this last as the delusion of "cheap grace."

Indeed, the radical sense of entitlement, though utterly incompatible with the teaching spelled out in Ezekiel 33, Matthew 25 or Romans 1, undergirds the delusional patina of progressivism.

When one is infected with the delusional expectation we call "entitlement," the disappointment of expectation can result in "going postal" or paralyzing a nation's economy or making real salvation all but impossible.

It can turn a republic into a dictatorship virtually overnight.