So I started on Twitter the other day.  Yeah, I know, if you’re a techno-nerd you’re asking why it took me so long, and if you’re not, you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.  It took me a bit to get it figured out, but Twitter essentially acts as my personal scrolling news feed.  CNBC has one, all the financial networks do, and now I do.  I get all the news about mortgages, and about my friends, that I could ever want.

But one thing I also get is a raft of questions about mortgages.  I am a Zillow All-Star, so I answer questions there quite a bit as well, but the Twitter-questions are different.  There is a lot of frustration out there about the bailouts, the new mortgage rescue programs, the endless series of new regulations, all of which seem designed to save people who made bad decisions from their natural consequences.

This is not a rant about that.  I did that other places.  And like a lot of people, I made bad decisions, too.  Humans do that.  Sometimes we should have known better, and sometimes we could not have known better.  Sometimes it’s bad judgment, and sometimes bad luck.  Rain falls on the just and on the unjust, as the Good Book says.

No, this column is about what to do when the consequences hit:

Cowboy up.

Yep, that’s it.

Oh, fine.  Here’s some explanation, though I don’t see why we should need it.  There’s a lot of muttering in the Twitterverse about “where’s my bailout”, mostly by people that have kept their noses clean and paid their mortgages on time, haven’t declared bankruptcy and were smart about their financial choices.  However understandable it is, folks, that’s the wrong question.

Once, in this country and elsewhere, there was an ethos that every man take care of himself, and if he had some to spare, he gave to his family, and if there was still some, he gave to others.  I don’t know quite when the process of abandoning that idea began, but begin it did, and it’s now maturing.  And it stinks.  More than that, it’s dangerous.

The Founders of this country recognized that democracy was a bad idea as a political system, because it could only work as long as people weren’t greedy.  Once the greed set in, people would realize that they could get together and vote themselves big chunks of money from the public treasury, which would eventually bankrupt the system and lead to dictatorship.  What they didn’t realize, or, if they did, they couldn’t find any way to prevent, was that once greed set in it would corrupt any system, no matter what it was, and the same process would begin.  Perhaps there is no way to prevent it.

John Kennedy tried, when he urged us not to ask what the country could do for us, but what we could do for the country.  Fine words, little heeded.  Everyone these days seems to be asking what the country can do for him, and getting pretty steamed if the answer is “nothing”, not because he needs help, but because someone else, somewhere else, is getting something.  It’s not fair, we say.

No.  It’s not.  Suck it up and deal with it.

By “deal with it”, I mean “don’t go looking for a handout”.  If you have a problem with your neighbor playing his music too loud, make your first call to the neighbor, not the cops.  If you’re going to miss a payment on your credit card, call the credit card company, not the bankruptcy attorney.  If you can’t pay your mortgage, call the mortgage servicer and see what you can work out.  If you get evicted anyway, call me, for crying out loud.  We’ll find you something.

Once, a long time ago, when I was press secretary for a Congressional candidate, I went to a debate in the candidate’s place.  It was held at the BYU School of Social Sciences, which proved a very inhospitable place for a guy like me.  After all, these people were nearly all going into social work, looking for jobs in government, and were firmly convinced of their altruism for doing so.  And probably they were altruistic.  Certainly they were very fierce in their desire to use the power of government to help people.

At one point, I made a statement to the effect that I believed Americans to be the most charitable people on earth, and that if they were left alone, they’d be more charitable still.  This met with stony stares and much head-shaking.  Not so, the commenter contended; only by using government to force people to share was there any chance most people could be taken care of.  I rejected this, and said, near as I can remember, “I don’t believe that.  There’s lots of chatter about how conservatives don’t care about people, but we do.  In point of fact, we not only care about them, we believe in them.  I believe that we will care for one another, and I believe this because I do it, and those around me do it, and almost everyone I know does it, as best he can.”

I still believe this.  I believe it even more strongly now than I ever have.  This community, and I am speaking now specifically about Lehi, Utah, is a good place and there are great people here.  One of the reasons I belong to the Lehi Rotary Club is that I get to hobnob with people that care deeply about the city and the people in it.  There is help out there.

If you’re one of the smart ones, and you don’t need any help yourself, find someone who does.  This is not to say that you shouldn’t call your lawmakers and urge them to stop giving handouts.  If you want to, do it.  But don’t ask for a handout yourself just because other people are getting one.  Give a hand to someone that needs it and be grateful it’s not you.  There is a God, and He’s still keeping score.  Bank on it.  It will all come right in the end.

These are hard times, but we are hard people.  We can deal.  Don’t quit, don’t give up.  Don’t look for the easy way, look for the right way.  Live up to your word, even if it’s very hard to do so and it looks like you could skate.  The more of us that do this, that cowboy up, the faster we’re going to get out of this mess and start moving forward again.

Chris Jones is a Branch Manager at City 1^st Mortgage Services, the north county’s premier lender (chris@lehilender.com )at 60 West Main in Lehi.  He specializes in Utah mortgages.  He is also the Resident Magician of The Chris Jones Group, a consultancy on a wide range of financial, political, and economic issues (their blog is here).  He and his wife Jeanette live in Lehi with their largest investments: 8 children, two cats, and a variable number of chickens.