DESERVE????? WHAT DO WE DESERVE?
This will be quick and to the point (or not). I heard a commercial for one of the "One call, that's all" attorneys just now that concluded with the words "****** helped us get the money we deserve."
Now I have no way of knowing anything about the case in question so I don't know whether this individual deserved money or jail time, it was the word "deserve" that caught my ear. I have heard it so much in commercials, in sermons, in a variety of different contexts.

This afternoon, in a commercial for credit counseling or cancelling company that required that a new customer have at least forty thousand dollars in credit card debt, the man on the air said "********** helped us get out of debt and get the credit we deserved." You explain to me how anyone with forty thousand dollars in unpaid credit card debt deserves ANYTHING. (Except perhaps --- well, I can't think of anything good.

WE live in a country, however, that encourages us to belief that somebody else should take care of us in every situation. My favorite unabridged dictionary is the Colliers Unabridged Dictionary, 1926 edition. This dictionary defines "deserve" as "to earn by service, to be justly entitled to, or worthy of; merit" I think that we all need to analyze the things we think we deserve, and to determine whether they are earned by merit, or by the often repeated cliche that "WE DESERVE- - - - because of who we are and where we live, and therefore we should have it.)