By Tom Rhodes, 4/23/2015
America is suffering a moral collapse. This realization is leading more people to realize they are in fact Libertarians in their beliefs. Resent research shows more Americans describe themselves as libertarian than conservative or republican. It’s a moral not an ethical situation. But it’s too little too late.
Ever hear of situational morals? No you haven’t. You have undoubtedly heard of situational ethics. The reason is that morals ? ethics. Ethics are rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture. Whereas Morals are the distinction between right and wrong. Ethics are governed by professional and legal guidelines within a particular time and place Morality transcends cultural norms and time. There are moral truths, such as it is wrong to murder, it is wrong to steal from another, etc.
Lying is a prime example of situation ethics. It is not considered unethical for law enforcement to lie, nor is there a legal constraint saying law enforcement officers can’t lie to you. However it is unethical and illegal for you to lie to a law enforcement officer. Morally lying is wrong. St. Augustine wrote the first extensive treatise on lying (De Mendacio). In it he cites the case of a holy bishop, Firmus of Thagasta, who wished to protect a man who had sought refuge with him. The bishop was so careful of the truth that, rather than lying to the imperial officers who pursued the fugitive, he told them frankly that he would not reveal the man’s location. Firmus maintained this resolve even under torture, with the result that he was eventually brought before the emperor himself. But the emperor was so impressed with the bishop’s virtue that he both praised the bishop and pardoned the fugitive. *
Augustine tells this story to provide a saintly witness for his argument that lying is always morally wrong, regardless of the circumstances, and to note that God is perfectly capable of extricating from trouble those who stand fast in the truth. His treatise has been widely cited ever since, and his viewpoint was endorsed by no less saintly a scholar than Thomas Aquinas. In the monumental Summa Theologiae, Thomas states the same position: "Therefore it is not lawful to tell a lie in order to deliver another from any danger whatever. Nevertheless it is lawful to hide the truth prudently, by keeping it back, as Augustine says"*
To put it in simple Redneck English and less philosophical, the Disney character Thumper sums it up, “If you can’t say nothin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”
The Ethics of Lying has changed dramatically in US politics. Consider three famous Presidents caught lying in recent US history: Richard M. Nixon, lied, got impeached by the House, tried and found guilty by the Senate, held accountable for his abuses of power forced out of office ; William Clinton, lied, got impeached by the House, was not found guilty by the Senate, allowed to serve his term; Barrack Obama, lied (caught in several humongous woppers that make Nixon and Clinton look like saints), and was not held accountable for any of his lies and abuses of power. The ethics of lying while POTUS have clearly changed, as a society we no longer hold elected officials to the same ethical standards we once did. Our ethics have changed, the morality of lying has not.
Most libertarians have high moral standards. They believe that, as our forefathers stated, a person’s rights are unalienable. Meaning a person’s rights are not dependent on the government allowing them, but precede the government and by virtue of being a person without any dependence on any other, unalienable rights exist. These basic rights are life and liberty. No other person or group or state has the right to take your life or liberty unless your actions infringe upon the unalienable rights of another. These are moral truths not ethical rules. Your rights to life and liberty, grant you the freedom to maintain both as you see fit. Hence you are at liberty to gather food, shelter, clothing, etc. to maintain your life and other such property to make your life happier. Your liberty to do this does not grant you the right to force others to provide you with food, shelter, and what-not, to maintain your life, nor to take the justly acquired property of another. Your right to life and liberty does not obligate others to provide you with the necessities to maintain that life.
This idea is new and very short lived in human civilization. Implementing the idea that rights are granted by our Creator and unalienable, and that individuals instituted government for the sole purpose of protecting unalienable rights, resulted in the most prosperous society the world ever saw with the highest standard of living for more people in that society ever. That society embraced those ideas so thoroughly that it ended up fighting a civil war, killing off huge numbers of its own men, over the belief that “all men are created equal,” thus ending slavery in that society. Soon after that culture, the former USA, became the most powerful nation in the world.
Abandoning Morals and changing the Ethics of that society over time is bringing back the norm for human civilization. That norm being a few ruling elite live in luxury with different rules and “rights” to the common man, while the common man toils in relative privation. Feelings over situations have resulted in our culture dismissing moral truth and embracing situational ethics, as such we are returning to tyranny.
It is morally wrong to deprive a man of life, liberty, or property without due process. Today’s ethics ignore this: President Obama routinely orders the assassination of citizens without due process. Law enforcement routinely confiscates money and property without even charging the rightful owner with a crime. In Wisconsin, with the approval of district attorneys and judges, the police raided and took the property of people for merely expressing political opinions they didn’t like, they then threatened death and violence and destruction if those people dared talk about it. Even some libertarians are saying that people’s opinions and speech should be silenced because they are offended by it.
The idea that people expressing opinions that others find offensive should be illegal and those people should be silenced is now the acceptable ethic of the day. The moral imperative that all people have an unalienable right to the liberty of expressing whatever opinions they want is being abandoned. Quite recently, a significant number of people claiming to be libertarian, were up in arms and distraught over the arrest of a woman who was so incensed at others exercising their freedom of speech, by walking on an American flag, the took the flag and attempted to stop the expression by others. She aggressed against people exercising their unalienable right to freedom of speech and took their property and for that violation of other people’s rights she was rightly arrested. There are Libertarians saying she should not have been arrested, and that those expressing opinions they don’t like should have been silenced, claiming others walking on a flag they owned, and inviting others to do the same in some way violated their rights. This is a sick perversion of morals to situational ethics. The idea that it is ethical to deprive people of an unalienable right if their exercise that right doesn’t meet some group approval. Political Correctness is situational ethics and devoid of moral consistency.
Ethical relativity, as expressed by refusing to accept Moral truth, has and is leading to the destruction of our culture. If a culture accepts idea that all morals are mere subjective opinions and all cultural ethics are equally valid, such a culture will have no willingness to fight for any value. If all cultural ethics are equal then the ethos that says all dissenting speech should be silenced is just as valid as the ethos that all speech should be protected. If we teach that Morals are not truths, and only the Ethics (or rules) accepted by a society are valid, then beheading a person for not being a Muslim is just as valid as protecting the right of people to believe as they wish. A culture that treats moral truth as mere opinion will rot and fail. I wish I could do more than stand back and watch, but when even in the LP we have people willing to abandon unalienable rights it’s clear there is little hope for modern Western Civilization.
What Moral Truths are you willing to fight for, I don’t mean what Morals are you willing to write a letter and complain about, or what Morals you are willing to donate money to a cause. What Moral Truths are you willing to physically battle others to protect, even if it means you might die. Is there a “value” you think protecting is worth more than your reputation, livelihood, or life? There are others today willing to fight to the death, and die, in order to instill their moral values on you and the rest of the world. If you’re not willing to die protecting your moral values, you’ve already lost. We changed our culture to now commonly teache that morals are not truth only opinion, and that our morals are no different or better than any others. Do you expect people raised and taught to believe the morals of all cultures are equally valid to fight and die to protect their way of life? What tyranny would you consider taking up arms?
If you can’t image yourself taking up arms to protect you way of life, then you believe that your way of life is not worth protecting. ISIS and the Muslim world believes that you have no moral character and there is nothing you would be willing to fight for, that’s why they believe they will win. The statists in charge, call them Democrats or Republicans, believe that they have successfully neutered the moral character of the country so that they can do almost anything and there is nothing the people are willing to fight for. The Bundy Ranch standoff, shows the country is not yet totally neutered. How much more are you disposed to suffer, than to right yourself by abolishing the forms of tyranny to which you are accustomed? Do you believe in any Moral Truths?
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Monday, June 16, 2014
Fraud Legal, Rule of Law Dead.
By Tom Rhodes, 6/16/2014
For centuries fraud has been illegal. The fundamental English Common law pretty much dictated that if you sell somebody something, and then deliver something other than what you said you sold, you are guilty of fraud. If I tell you I’ll sell you a 5 lb sack of potatoes for $3 dollars, and you then take the clearly labeled 5 pound sack of potatoes and later find out it had 5 lbs of rocks you have a clear case of fraud, and could win compensation for the fraud in court. Simple enough principle and everybody agrees advertising and selling potatoes and delivering rocks is fraudulent and illegal and actionable.
Unless of court you’re a bank. The rule of law no longer applies to banks. It is now legal for banks to falsely represent their products to consumers. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) won dismissal of a suit over $450 million in residential mortgage-backed securities, with a New York judge saying that the firms that bought the bonds should have done more research beforehand.
State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos dismissed the claims against Goldman Sachs today, saying the investors only reviewed data presented in offering documents for the securities and never asked to review files for the underlying loans.
“The true nature of the risk being assumed could, admittedly, have been ascertained from reviewing these loan files and plaintiffs never asked for them,” Ramos wrote.
In no uncertain terms judges have ruled that it is perfectly legal to present someone with a fraudulent document claiming to be selling them a pig in the poke, if you don’t actually look in the crate to see that there is a dead cat, and not a live pig in there, it's your fault.
Singlehandedly Judge Ramos has destroyed the loan security market. You are now responsible for checking every single loan that Is part of a mortgage security to ascertain the risk. The bank offering the security is allowed to legally present you with a fraudulent document that doesn’t reflect the actual risks of the loans making up such securities.
Imagine if food companies could legally tell you that the ground beef you were buying was USDA certified and inspected, and sell you rotten mutton instead. If you didn’t check the actual inspection certificate for that lot and compare it to USDA documents, you couldn’t sue for fraud.
Imagine ordering a computer from Amazon online, you purchase a unit advertised to have a Pentium i7 processor and 8GB of ram, and a 2TB hard drive, when you open the box you get an 4.77Mhz XT with an 8088 processor, a single floppy and 256K of ram. Then you find out you have no legal recourse, can’t return it, and can’t sue you didn’t verify that the components in the box where what was promised. That’s the new standard for Banking.
If you have an IRA, or retirement fund that has any money in financial securities, you can be legally fleeced because the banks have no legal requirement to be honest in their holdings, and if you or your broker doesn’t verify the validity of all the details in any prospectus provided independently, you have no recourse.
Game over people, banks are exempt from the law, just like congress. We no longer live in a nation of laws, but an oligarchy ruled by money changers and political hacks. Now that you cannot get justice from the government, the result will be bad. Real bad. To have justice you will be forced to seek it yourself. Just as if you purchase an ounce of pot and get an ounce of oregano, you can’t go to police. Now if you get a bad prospectus and the bank takes your life savings, you can’t go to the FCC or police. So like drug dealers and users, if ripped off you have two choices, accept being ripped off and write off your loses or seek justice on your own. Drug dealers often die violently because they ripped somebody off. Bankers fraudulently take too many people’s money and the courts and government don’t let them get away with it, and they too might be treated like a drug dealer selling oregano as pot. When enough people lose their life savings and their homes because bankers are legally allowed to present fraudulent documents, and those people have no recourse, you will see violent repercussions. Justice in the USA is looking more and more like the third world; justice depends on who you know and your political status not the rule of law.
For centuries fraud has been illegal. The fundamental English Common law pretty much dictated that if you sell somebody something, and then deliver something other than what you said you sold, you are guilty of fraud. If I tell you I’ll sell you a 5 lb sack of potatoes for $3 dollars, and you then take the clearly labeled 5 pound sack of potatoes and later find out it had 5 lbs of rocks you have a clear case of fraud, and could win compensation for the fraud in court. Simple enough principle and everybody agrees advertising and selling potatoes and delivering rocks is fraudulent and illegal and actionable.
Unless of court you’re a bank. The rule of law no longer applies to banks. It is now legal for banks to falsely represent their products to consumers. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) won dismissal of a suit over $450 million in residential mortgage-backed securities, with a New York judge saying that the firms that bought the bonds should have done more research beforehand.
State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos dismissed the claims against Goldman Sachs today, saying the investors only reviewed data presented in offering documents for the securities and never asked to review files for the underlying loans.
“The true nature of the risk being assumed could, admittedly, have been ascertained from reviewing these loan files and plaintiffs never asked for them,” Ramos wrote.
In no uncertain terms judges have ruled that it is perfectly legal to present someone with a fraudulent document claiming to be selling them a pig in the poke, if you don’t actually look in the crate to see that there is a dead cat, and not a live pig in there, it's your fault.
Singlehandedly Judge Ramos has destroyed the loan security market. You are now responsible for checking every single loan that Is part of a mortgage security to ascertain the risk. The bank offering the security is allowed to legally present you with a fraudulent document that doesn’t reflect the actual risks of the loans making up such securities.
Imagine if food companies could legally tell you that the ground beef you were buying was USDA certified and inspected, and sell you rotten mutton instead. If you didn’t check the actual inspection certificate for that lot and compare it to USDA documents, you couldn’t sue for fraud.
Imagine ordering a computer from Amazon online, you purchase a unit advertised to have a Pentium i7 processor and 8GB of ram, and a 2TB hard drive, when you open the box you get an 4.77Mhz XT with an 8088 processor, a single floppy and 256K of ram. Then you find out you have no legal recourse, can’t return it, and can’t sue you didn’t verify that the components in the box where what was promised. That’s the new standard for Banking.
If you have an IRA, or retirement fund that has any money in financial securities, you can be legally fleeced because the banks have no legal requirement to be honest in their holdings, and if you or your broker doesn’t verify the validity of all the details in any prospectus provided independently, you have no recourse.
Game over people, banks are exempt from the law, just like congress. We no longer live in a nation of laws, but an oligarchy ruled by money changers and political hacks. Now that you cannot get justice from the government, the result will be bad. Real bad. To have justice you will be forced to seek it yourself. Just as if you purchase an ounce of pot and get an ounce of oregano, you can’t go to police. Now if you get a bad prospectus and the bank takes your life savings, you can’t go to the FCC or police. So like drug dealers and users, if ripped off you have two choices, accept being ripped off and write off your loses or seek justice on your own. Drug dealers often die violently because they ripped somebody off. Bankers fraudulently take too many people’s money and the courts and government don’t let them get away with it, and they too might be treated like a drug dealer selling oregano as pot. When enough people lose their life savings and their homes because bankers are legally allowed to present fraudulent documents, and those people have no recourse, you will see violent repercussions. Justice in the USA is looking more and more like the third world; justice depends on who you know and your political status not the rule of law.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
The Simple Difference
By Tom Rhodes 4/6/2012
When a libertarian hears something on the radio he doesn’t like, say an NPR Editorial or a Strasburg Waltz, he turns the channel; exercising free will and choosing not to listen to what they want without infringing on other peoples free choice to listen. When a Liberal rears something on the radio he doesn’t like, say a Rush Editorial or a Lee Greenwood moldy oldy they try to create a law like the “Fairness Doctrine” or take some other actions so that nobody has the choice to listen to what liberals don’t want to hear.
The difference is simple and clear. Liberals don’t want people to be allowed to exercise free will if people don’t exercise freedom in a way liberals don’t like.
This can be seen in a huge variety of liberal positions. Take education, liberals are against any programs that actually offer parents choices in how their children are educated. They are anti-voucher, anti-charter schools, and anti-homeschooling. They simply don’t want people to have the freedom to choose what they think is best for their children because they want control and allowing people freedom means that the government doesn’t have control.
Consider something as simple as housing. Liberals and totalitarians worldwide are trying to force “sustainable” development rules on the world. They want concentrations of people renting, they do not want “sprawl” it doesn’t matter what people freely want to choose for themselves. Private property, and the free choice of people to have and use private property as they see fit is not even a consideration of liberals. They don’t want to allow individuals to exercise free will, but instead want some ruling elite to determine what is best and dictate how to live. Freedom of individuals to live as they see fit isn’t even considered. In fact they have such disdain for individual that they routinely claim that “most” people aren’t smart enough to make decisions for themselves.
Those who believe in liberty, libertarians, also know that with the exercise of free will comes the responsibility to live with the results of your choices. This is why liberals hate liberty; it has associated responsibility. They don’t want themselves or others to be responsible for the consequences of free will. Health care is a perfect example, they do not want people to have to be responsible for their life choices, and want those who make responsible choices to have to pay and care for those who don’t. They call it wealth redistribution, but it is a simple matter of not wanting anybody to suffer the consequences of exercising free will. They think that somebody who smokes, over eats, and never exercises should have the same affordable health care as somebody who doesn’t smoke, exercises regularly, and is careful about what they eat.
This is also why they are generally anti-Christian. Christianity is at its heart the exercise of free will. Christians believe that there is only one way, and that everybody has free will to choose or not choose the path to salvation. Liberals hate the fact that the exercise of free will and making a bad choice means eternal damnation. They hate free will, because some people might not make the right choice. The ultimate expression of freedom is in Christianity, where a person can be free from the guilt and punishment of a lifetime of sins by simply exercising free will. Of course that acknowledges the responsibility for accepting the consequences of that decision. Exercising free will has consequences, liberals have some child like idea that nobody should suffer for anything, and that nobody should have to live with the consequences of making bad choices, hence they hate free will and liberty.
In Wyoming officials admitted that they infringed upon the first amendment rights of a Christian group. Their solution, rather than stop discriminating against one view point, is to silence all viewpoints. Rather than tolerate the exercise of expression that they don’t like, they choose to install rules that mean nobody is allowed to communicate any ideas. (LINK)
It is so bad that in the people’s republic of Massachusetts school officials went so far as to change the words of Lee Greenwood’s 1984 song “God Bless the USA,” that little kids would be singing. Once the outcry from the general public, and Greenwood exercised his copyrights telling them that they couldn’t take God out of his song because as he said, "it’s the most important part", the liberal government types in Massachusetts took the predicted mode and just canceling the entire concert.
The simple difference between liberals and libertarians is tolerance. Liberals do not and will not tolerate any ideas or even the expression of ideas they don’t like, their actions and words clearly reflect this. Go look at or join in some political discussion groups on Facebook, you will clearly see that it is liberals that call for the removal of those they don’t agree, or when liberal government types run a discussion group they are the first to remove people whose ideas they don’t like. The actual evidence is clear, liberal government types cannot stand and don’t tolerate ideas they don’t like, ideas like free will, and liberty.
Now do you want people whose actions repeatedly demonstrate that that believe that is preferable to silence everybody than allow expressions they don’t agree, making your laws? Voting for a liberal government type that is exactly what you get. Be the liberal government type named Obama, or Romney, voting for them is a vote to restrict your rights and a vote against tolerance.
When a libertarian hears something on the radio he doesn’t like, say an NPR Editorial or a Strasburg Waltz, he turns the channel; exercising free will and choosing not to listen to what they want without infringing on other peoples free choice to listen. When a Liberal rears something on the radio he doesn’t like, say a Rush Editorial or a Lee Greenwood moldy oldy they try to create a law like the “Fairness Doctrine” or take some other actions so that nobody has the choice to listen to what liberals don’t want to hear.
The difference is simple and clear. Liberals don’t want people to be allowed to exercise free will if people don’t exercise freedom in a way liberals don’t like.
This can be seen in a huge variety of liberal positions. Take education, liberals are against any programs that actually offer parents choices in how their children are educated. They are anti-voucher, anti-charter schools, and anti-homeschooling. They simply don’t want people to have the freedom to choose what they think is best for their children because they want control and allowing people freedom means that the government doesn’t have control.
Consider something as simple as housing. Liberals and totalitarians worldwide are trying to force “sustainable” development rules on the world. They want concentrations of people renting, they do not want “sprawl” it doesn’t matter what people freely want to choose for themselves. Private property, and the free choice of people to have and use private property as they see fit is not even a consideration of liberals. They don’t want to allow individuals to exercise free will, but instead want some ruling elite to determine what is best and dictate how to live. Freedom of individuals to live as they see fit isn’t even considered. In fact they have such disdain for individual that they routinely claim that “most” people aren’t smart enough to make decisions for themselves.
Those who believe in liberty, libertarians, also know that with the exercise of free will comes the responsibility to live with the results of your choices. This is why liberals hate liberty; it has associated responsibility. They don’t want themselves or others to be responsible for the consequences of free will. Health care is a perfect example, they do not want people to have to be responsible for their life choices, and want those who make responsible choices to have to pay and care for those who don’t. They call it wealth redistribution, but it is a simple matter of not wanting anybody to suffer the consequences of exercising free will. They think that somebody who smokes, over eats, and never exercises should have the same affordable health care as somebody who doesn’t smoke, exercises regularly, and is careful about what they eat.
This is also why they are generally anti-Christian. Christianity is at its heart the exercise of free will. Christians believe that there is only one way, and that everybody has free will to choose or not choose the path to salvation. Liberals hate the fact that the exercise of free will and making a bad choice means eternal damnation. They hate free will, because some people might not make the right choice. The ultimate expression of freedom is in Christianity, where a person can be free from the guilt and punishment of a lifetime of sins by simply exercising free will. Of course that acknowledges the responsibility for accepting the consequences of that decision. Exercising free will has consequences, liberals have some child like idea that nobody should suffer for anything, and that nobody should have to live with the consequences of making bad choices, hence they hate free will and liberty.
In Wyoming officials admitted that they infringed upon the first amendment rights of a Christian group. Their solution, rather than stop discriminating against one view point, is to silence all viewpoints. Rather than tolerate the exercise of expression that they don’t like, they choose to install rules that mean nobody is allowed to communicate any ideas. (LINK)
It is so bad that in the people’s republic of Massachusetts school officials went so far as to change the words of Lee Greenwood’s 1984 song “God Bless the USA,” that little kids would be singing. Once the outcry from the general public, and Greenwood exercised his copyrights telling them that they couldn’t take God out of his song because as he said, "it’s the most important part", the liberal government types in Massachusetts took the predicted mode and just canceling the entire concert.
The simple difference between liberals and libertarians is tolerance. Liberals do not and will not tolerate any ideas or even the expression of ideas they don’t like, their actions and words clearly reflect this. Go look at or join in some political discussion groups on Facebook, you will clearly see that it is liberals that call for the removal of those they don’t agree, or when liberal government types run a discussion group they are the first to remove people whose ideas they don’t like. The actual evidence is clear, liberal government types cannot stand and don’t tolerate ideas they don’t like, ideas like free will, and liberty.
Now do you want people whose actions repeatedly demonstrate that that believe that is preferable to silence everybody than allow expressions they don’t agree, making your laws? Voting for a liberal government type that is exactly what you get. Be the liberal government type named Obama, or Romney, voting for them is a vote to restrict your rights and a vote against tolerance.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Use of Force
By Tom Rhodes 2/24/2012
The one and only requirement to be a member of the Libertarian Party is to take a pledge, affirming that you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. This is a short summary of the non-aggression principle. This is based on a very old assumption. That man is a rational being.
This is a moral stance, choosing to move a relationship outside the realm of reason into the realm of physical violence – is immoral among rational human beings. This is based this assertion on the self-evident fact that your faculty of reason, your ability to integrate the data of your senses into concepts (from which you make decisions regarding goal-directed actions), is your only means of long-term survival. It is not moral and just to use force to effect social or political change.
If there is a human conflict there are only two way to resolve that conflict: reason or force. Force has a physical component, but this does not mean all manifestations of force involve a physical component. Theft is force, because it deprives people of assets rightfully theirs. Fraud is force, because it is a form of theft. The use of a threat of force to coerce a response it is still force.
Our Declaration of Independence was a confirmation of the non-aggression principle. We declared our independence using reason and logic and offered a clearly non-violent means to establish sovereignty from England. England, then initiated force, not reason, to attempt to instill its will on America. The use of force in response to England’s aggression was moral and just, as the use of force for self-defense is not immoral.
Democrats, Statists, socialists, leftists, and progressives of all type, realize that they cannot win based on logic and reason, so they continually resort to force to impose their will on others. Obamacare is a prime example. Education, reasoning, and communicating of all types have failed to convince a significant portion of the population to voluntarily purchase health insurance. People doing careful risk analysis sometimes choose not to purchase insurance despite what the left think is in their best interest. The idea that some people may make reasoned decisions that don’t conform to what statists think are best, and then choose to act or not act in what they feel is their individual best interest galls at statists. Having failed to convince the people they now resort to force.
Since statists cannot persuade the people through reason and they force them to comply with statist wishes; Statists contradict the recognition of reason as the only moral method achieve political or social goals. We see this almost every day. Democrats cannot persuade the voters to do as they wish, they use the courts or executive orders to force their demands – demands that run contrary to individual reason. Pointing at your citizens the gun of government mandate, telling them they’ll do as the government dictates no matter how injurious to those citizens those dictates are, is violence. It is the kind of violence that makes liberals insufferably self-righteous and arrogant when they hold political power.
If you accept the fact that all people are discrete individuals, sole owners of themselves, and not the property of another, you then accept that you cannot live another person’s life, thus you cannot presume to force others to comply with your wishes. Your inalienable rights to your person and to the results of your labor are violated when force is initiated against you.
Obamacare and other crony Democratic tyranny conform to no morally acceptable philosophical justification. Statist force is not rational, or moral. Statists, specifically liberals, use force for the singular purpose of molding and shaping a disinclined public to their statist ideology. They are content and willing to lie, to defraud, to steal in making their case, but if necessary they are just as content to make you comply. In the history of implementing leftist ideology is also the history of the most violent forceful revolutions and governments in the history of the world. The more socialistic a government is the more violently forceful it is.
Failure to accept liberal ideology, regardless of what personal harm it may bring you, if you choose not to obey, liberals will see to it that you end destitute, imprisoned, or dead. These are actions they will happily initiate and they also they’ll expect you to thank them for doing it; it’s for your own good after all.
Reason and logic dictate that economically, low taxes, free enterprise, and economic freedom provide the best overall quality of life for more people in a society than any other system. This is proven historically and objectively.
Reason and logic are discarded because economic freedom and liberty also imply economic responsibility. This means that a certain portion of society, when granted economic freedom will fail to support themselves, and suffer. Although overall more people will be better off Liberals use this as an excuse to throw away reason and logic, and employ despotic methodologies to control the people through emotion.
It is this reasoning used to “mandate” every person by virtue of being alive, purchase health insurance. The idea is that because we must Force people (through taxes) to provide charity, to pay for health care goods and services for those who cannot or will not take responsibility for themselves, thus they have the right to force everybody to purchase insurance. Logic and reason and a failure to accept that people are free to make choices, and prosper or suffer as a consequence of those decisions, grants liberals the impudence to justify the use force to enforce their morals on everybody else. Because they believe people won’t make choices they think are best, and failing to use reason to convince people to make choices they think are best, liberals simply abandon reason and use force.
If you believe that it is morally acceptable to use force, or the threat of force, to achieve political or social goals then you can justify the Obamacare mandate. If however you believe that people have unalienable rights, you cannot justify the Obamacare mandate.
The people of the USA have spoken using reason, we selected through elections, representatives to thwart the policies and objectives of the Obama administration. Having failed to use reason and logic to convince the people through their representatives to implement laws that Obama and the leftist in the Democrat party want, they now resort to force, ignoring the rule of law, ruling by executive order, and bureaucratic fiat, not legislation. Because our representative government didn’t produce the results the Obama administration wanted, they have proven to be willing to abandon the constitutional checks and balances and resort to force not reason to get their way. The dictates of the Obama administration forcing churches to purchase and provide goods and services that are clearly historically against both their conscience and beliefs by fiat not law is one example. The creation of positions that can impose such “regulations” through bureaucracy rather than legislation, are evidence that statists of both parties don’t want to even bother with reasoning and persuading the people, but instead prefer the use of force.
This is a return to the ruling class and clear usurpation of individual liberty. Statists are concentrating power in ruling elite by trading individual liberty for “security” using force not reason. They failed using reason and persuasion, and since they believe that the ends justify the means they accept resorting to force. The results, if history is any indicator, will be tyranny not security. Of course tyranny by a few ruling elite with general mass privation is the norm for mankind throughout its entire history; liberty, freedom, and relative luxury that it produces are the historical exception. The only faster way to tyranny than the slow socialization of a republic, is anarchy.
The one and only requirement to be a member of the Libertarian Party is to take a pledge, affirming that you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. This is a short summary of the non-aggression principle. This is based on a very old assumption. That man is a rational being.
This is a moral stance, choosing to move a relationship outside the realm of reason into the realm of physical violence – is immoral among rational human beings. This is based this assertion on the self-evident fact that your faculty of reason, your ability to integrate the data of your senses into concepts (from which you make decisions regarding goal-directed actions), is your only means of long-term survival. It is not moral and just to use force to effect social or political change.
If there is a human conflict there are only two way to resolve that conflict: reason or force. Force has a physical component, but this does not mean all manifestations of force involve a physical component. Theft is force, because it deprives people of assets rightfully theirs. Fraud is force, because it is a form of theft. The use of a threat of force to coerce a response it is still force.
Our Declaration of Independence was a confirmation of the non-aggression principle. We declared our independence using reason and logic and offered a clearly non-violent means to establish sovereignty from England. England, then initiated force, not reason, to attempt to instill its will on America. The use of force in response to England’s aggression was moral and just, as the use of force for self-defense is not immoral.
Democrats, Statists, socialists, leftists, and progressives of all type, realize that they cannot win based on logic and reason, so they continually resort to force to impose their will on others. Obamacare is a prime example. Education, reasoning, and communicating of all types have failed to convince a significant portion of the population to voluntarily purchase health insurance. People doing careful risk analysis sometimes choose not to purchase insurance despite what the left think is in their best interest. The idea that some people may make reasoned decisions that don’t conform to what statists think are best, and then choose to act or not act in what they feel is their individual best interest galls at statists. Having failed to convince the people they now resort to force.
Since statists cannot persuade the people through reason and they force them to comply with statist wishes; Statists contradict the recognition of reason as the only moral method achieve political or social goals. We see this almost every day. Democrats cannot persuade the voters to do as they wish, they use the courts or executive orders to force their demands – demands that run contrary to individual reason. Pointing at your citizens the gun of government mandate, telling them they’ll do as the government dictates no matter how injurious to those citizens those dictates are, is violence. It is the kind of violence that makes liberals insufferably self-righteous and arrogant when they hold political power.
If you accept the fact that all people are discrete individuals, sole owners of themselves, and not the property of another, you then accept that you cannot live another person’s life, thus you cannot presume to force others to comply with your wishes. Your inalienable rights to your person and to the results of your labor are violated when force is initiated against you.
Obamacare and other crony Democratic tyranny conform to no morally acceptable philosophical justification. Statist force is not rational, or moral. Statists, specifically liberals, use force for the singular purpose of molding and shaping a disinclined public to their statist ideology. They are content and willing to lie, to defraud, to steal in making their case, but if necessary they are just as content to make you comply. In the history of implementing leftist ideology is also the history of the most violent forceful revolutions and governments in the history of the world. The more socialistic a government is the more violently forceful it is.
Failure to accept liberal ideology, regardless of what personal harm it may bring you, if you choose not to obey, liberals will see to it that you end destitute, imprisoned, or dead. These are actions they will happily initiate and they also they’ll expect you to thank them for doing it; it’s for your own good after all.
Reason and logic dictate that economically, low taxes, free enterprise, and economic freedom provide the best overall quality of life for more people in a society than any other system. This is proven historically and objectively.
Reason and logic are discarded because economic freedom and liberty also imply economic responsibility. This means that a certain portion of society, when granted economic freedom will fail to support themselves, and suffer. Although overall more people will be better off Liberals use this as an excuse to throw away reason and logic, and employ despotic methodologies to control the people through emotion.
It is this reasoning used to “mandate” every person by virtue of being alive, purchase health insurance. The idea is that because we must Force people (through taxes) to provide charity, to pay for health care goods and services for those who cannot or will not take responsibility for themselves, thus they have the right to force everybody to purchase insurance. Logic and reason and a failure to accept that people are free to make choices, and prosper or suffer as a consequence of those decisions, grants liberals the impudence to justify the use force to enforce their morals on everybody else. Because they believe people won’t make choices they think are best, and failing to use reason to convince people to make choices they think are best, liberals simply abandon reason and use force.
If you believe that it is morally acceptable to use force, or the threat of force, to achieve political or social goals then you can justify the Obamacare mandate. If however you believe that people have unalienable rights, you cannot justify the Obamacare mandate.
The people of the USA have spoken using reason, we selected through elections, representatives to thwart the policies and objectives of the Obama administration. Having failed to use reason and logic to convince the people through their representatives to implement laws that Obama and the leftist in the Democrat party want, they now resort to force, ignoring the rule of law, ruling by executive order, and bureaucratic fiat, not legislation. Because our representative government didn’t produce the results the Obama administration wanted, they have proven to be willing to abandon the constitutional checks and balances and resort to force not reason to get their way. The dictates of the Obama administration forcing churches to purchase and provide goods and services that are clearly historically against both their conscience and beliefs by fiat not law is one example. The creation of positions that can impose such “regulations” through bureaucracy rather than legislation, are evidence that statists of both parties don’t want to even bother with reasoning and persuading the people, but instead prefer the use of force.
This is a return to the ruling class and clear usurpation of individual liberty. Statists are concentrating power in ruling elite by trading individual liberty for “security” using force not reason. They failed using reason and persuasion, and since they believe that the ends justify the means they accept resorting to force. The results, if history is any indicator, will be tyranny not security. Of course tyranny by a few ruling elite with general mass privation is the norm for mankind throughout its entire history; liberty, freedom, and relative luxury that it produces are the historical exception. The only faster way to tyranny than the slow socialization of a republic, is anarchy.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The Moral Value of Effort
By Tom Rhodes, 12/7/2011
Imagine you are a mildly disabled couple with no employment, if you apply you are currently eligible to receive more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. Not only is there is no requirement to show your net worth and assets, but they are not considered, the only thing considered to be eligible is your income. Wages not wealth are what we tax, and use measure a person's ability to pay.
Wages are not considered a person's own but your labor is considered the government's who determines what part of those wages you are allowed to keep. Our whole system is based on taxing the labor of those who work; it is assumed if you don't work you have no access to money. This is why the average person living on welfare has color TV, Cable, AC and Heat, Microwaves, a car, and lives in an apartment or house with more square feet per person than the average middle class European. Significant numbers of people on welfare are better off living on the dole than trying to live on the wages commensurate with their skills, and can and do live without working better than if they worked, the incentive to work and increase their skills is not there. We reward those with no skills or ambition. This is not to say that there are not people truly in need, but that number is far less than the numbers of people who actually live on the dole.
Actually being needy is not a requirement for government "charity." Consider this couple, they live in a million dollar mansion, etc, and have huge amounts of accumulated wealth, can afford to give to charity and travel the world, yet receive tens of thousands of dollars from the government a year because their income indicates that they live in poverty. No not everybody is abusing the system this much, but why are we giving money to anybody who can support themselves but won't. Our current welfare system is immoral.
The reason why the US and Germany are arguably the most successful in the world, is they share as societies a basic moral value. These values can be summed up as follows: Effort should lead to reward as often as possible. People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity but not a guarantee. People should be rewarded monetarily based on enterprise, merit, and effort. People should be rewarded for exercising self-control while sloth and envy should not be rewarded. Our government and other institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness and shame irresponsibility and favoritism.
However there are a large group of people who see things through poorly shaded lenses that cloud their vision with an image of a permanent class war. They do not think it matters how people conduct themselves, they only consider the final outcome of who has and does not have wealth. Rather than expect a person to be self-reliant they assume any person who does not have wealth is poor because a person of wealth purposefully withheld either opportunity or property. They do not consider the effort put into creating and accumulating wealth to have any more value than breathing. These people are generally liberals, progressives, leftists, socialists, etc, and all firmly believe that resistance to redistribution of wealth is greed and avarice and treated with outrage.
Our current financial crisis came from bankers buying off politicians and both getting rich off of securing mortgages to people who were not qualified to repay them. Even now the government is requiring banks to grant loans to people who cannot repay them, in order to be "fair." We still reward sloth and envy those who legally acquire wealth. We know this yet, the left, our press, the government, and the banks refuse to even talk about letting the people who caused the crisis to be held responsible. Our massive debt is the problem, not a lack of taxes, yet the left never even considers any strategy to unwind the gigantic debt buildup. Because the basic structural problems plaguing our economy are not attended to, nor does our current leadership, regardless of party, appear to be willing to address them, as we currently see, the result is that the United States suffering from a horrible crisis of trust. The result of this lack of trust is crippling slowdown in growth, a paralyzed government, and the strangest direction of politics in modern history.
Business is sitting on massive wealth, but will not invest it because the uncertainty of whether they will be allowed to grow those investments. If investment and labor cannot be reasonably assured to produce prosperity, while government cronyism and theft are visibly rewarded and while we routinely provide for those who can but don't provide for themselves, you cannot expect people to work and invest with such uncertainty and obvious moral corruption. The very moral fabric that created the most prosperous and generous country the world has ever seen is being torn apart by power hungry collectivists who seek to redistribute the wealth of this nation not based on the idea that effort should lead to reward as often as possible, but based on the idea that regardless of effort everybody should receive the same rewards, and the ruling elite should receive a lot more.
We cannot subsidize behaviors that make us poorer, and penalize behaviors that make us richer and expect people to choose to behave in a manner that enriches themselves and the country. If you want people who have legally acquired wealth, to invest that wealth (not hoard and protect it), you cannot penalize the profits from investing and take away the fruits of their labor to such an extent that they are better off doing nothing with their labor and wealth than they are to exploit both for their and their communities betterment. Why would a person or company make an investment whose efforts are taxed to such an extent that if they simply purchased gold or other commodity and did nothing, they would make more off the increase in value due to inflation, than the profits from investing?
Here is an example; we need massive expansion to our aging power grid. Power companies are regulated extensively but guaranteed a profit (about 10%). If you have money to invest and after you pay the taxes on your dividends the real profit from investing in a power company is a modest but because power companies are government protected monopolies such investments are fairly safe. This investment would allow the power company to expand and make improvements. Now if you invested that same money in gold, you have an even safer haven for your wealth and the return is greater than the investing in a power company. There is not growth, but the wealth is protected against inflation; the growth and payout from the power company doesn't even cover real inflation. Obviously the incentive is no longer to invest but to protect wealth and assets. It is the government regulation that severely restricts the profit that can be made by power companies, and takes the profit that can be made by investors, and inflates the value of dollars, which has made conditions such that those with wealth are better off sitting on it that putting it to work. Since we now punish people who invest and work hard, and reward hoarding wealth and doing nothing, people are no longer investing and working hard, but are doing everything they can to protect what assets (wealth) they have.
Eliminating those who would protect the very moral fabric of our society is essential for liberals and the Wall Street - Government Complex. The ruling elite do not garner wealth through effort but by graft. They make the less fortunate dependent upon the largess of the ruling elite to buy their votes so they may remain in power and suck the wealth and labor from those who labor. Explain why congress and its employees are exempt from insider trading laws. Explain why the ruling elite guaranteed known bad mortgages, and rewarded bankers and themselves with massive amounts of money at the expense of the taxpayer. Explain why it is acceptable to have generations of people living on the dole. Explain why with more and more spending and more and more government control that the actual output of government education continues to get worse not better, especially for those who live dependent upon the government for their every need. Explain why they have restructured and tried to change the purpose of government to supply the needs of everybody, rather than provide protection for the rights of all individuals equally. Explain why we reward sloth and envy and punish self-reliance and effort. Obviously those who would return the US to a system where effort, enterprise, productivity, and self-discipline were rewarded and bad governance, sloth, and envy were not rewarding, would result in the ruling elite losing both wealth and power. The protection of individual liberty, although historically prove to enhancing a societies overall wealth and well being, diminishes central control and power, the ruling elite would rather all lose liberty than they have less power.
It took a little while longer than I expected but the ruling elite in DC have succeeded in eliminating or silencing all the presidential candidates who are willing to address the true problems facing this country. Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, and all the third party candidates have effectively been disqualified by the media and ruling elite in Washington. Even though Ron Paul, is still taking 2nd place in polls, and the people resonate with his message, the press and ruling elite will not address the issues he and others running who represent half of Americans who don't live off the government. All these candidates the collectivists don't want you exposed to share a common belief. They believe it is moral and just, and have a willingness, to hold the government accountable for its spending and seek to reestablish the basic moral formula that made this country great, based on moral values that has historically proven to provide the highest standard of living for the most people, a moral formula that so called progressives hate and refuse to acknowledge or address. That moral formula is simple, Effort should lead to reward as often as possible.
Imagine you are a mildly disabled couple with no employment, if you apply you are currently eligible to receive more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. Not only is there is no requirement to show your net worth and assets, but they are not considered, the only thing considered to be eligible is your income. Wages not wealth are what we tax, and use measure a person's ability to pay.
Wages are not considered a person's own but your labor is considered the government's who determines what part of those wages you are allowed to keep. Our whole system is based on taxing the labor of those who work; it is assumed if you don't work you have no access to money. This is why the average person living on welfare has color TV, Cable, AC and Heat, Microwaves, a car, and lives in an apartment or house with more square feet per person than the average middle class European. Significant numbers of people on welfare are better off living on the dole than trying to live on the wages commensurate with their skills, and can and do live without working better than if they worked, the incentive to work and increase their skills is not there. We reward those with no skills or ambition. This is not to say that there are not people truly in need, but that number is far less than the numbers of people who actually live on the dole.
Actually being needy is not a requirement for government "charity." Consider this couple, they live in a million dollar mansion, etc, and have huge amounts of accumulated wealth, can afford to give to charity and travel the world, yet receive tens of thousands of dollars from the government a year because their income indicates that they live in poverty. No not everybody is abusing the system this much, but why are we giving money to anybody who can support themselves but won't. Our current welfare system is immoral.
The reason why the US and Germany are arguably the most successful in the world, is they share as societies a basic moral value. These values can be summed up as follows: Effort should lead to reward as often as possible. People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity but not a guarantee. People should be rewarded monetarily based on enterprise, merit, and effort. People should be rewarded for exercising self-control while sloth and envy should not be rewarded. Our government and other institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness and shame irresponsibility and favoritism.
However there are a large group of people who see things through poorly shaded lenses that cloud their vision with an image of a permanent class war. They do not think it matters how people conduct themselves, they only consider the final outcome of who has and does not have wealth. Rather than expect a person to be self-reliant they assume any person who does not have wealth is poor because a person of wealth purposefully withheld either opportunity or property. They do not consider the effort put into creating and accumulating wealth to have any more value than breathing. These people are generally liberals, progressives, leftists, socialists, etc, and all firmly believe that resistance to redistribution of wealth is greed and avarice and treated with outrage.
Our current financial crisis came from bankers buying off politicians and both getting rich off of securing mortgages to people who were not qualified to repay them. Even now the government is requiring banks to grant loans to people who cannot repay them, in order to be "fair." We still reward sloth and envy those who legally acquire wealth. We know this yet, the left, our press, the government, and the banks refuse to even talk about letting the people who caused the crisis to be held responsible. Our massive debt is the problem, not a lack of taxes, yet the left never even considers any strategy to unwind the gigantic debt buildup. Because the basic structural problems plaguing our economy are not attended to, nor does our current leadership, regardless of party, appear to be willing to address them, as we currently see, the result is that the United States suffering from a horrible crisis of trust. The result of this lack of trust is crippling slowdown in growth, a paralyzed government, and the strangest direction of politics in modern history.
Business is sitting on massive wealth, but will not invest it because the uncertainty of whether they will be allowed to grow those investments. If investment and labor cannot be reasonably assured to produce prosperity, while government cronyism and theft are visibly rewarded and while we routinely provide for those who can but don't provide for themselves, you cannot expect people to work and invest with such uncertainty and obvious moral corruption. The very moral fabric that created the most prosperous and generous country the world has ever seen is being torn apart by power hungry collectivists who seek to redistribute the wealth of this nation not based on the idea that effort should lead to reward as often as possible, but based on the idea that regardless of effort everybody should receive the same rewards, and the ruling elite should receive a lot more.
We cannot subsidize behaviors that make us poorer, and penalize behaviors that make us richer and expect people to choose to behave in a manner that enriches themselves and the country. If you want people who have legally acquired wealth, to invest that wealth (not hoard and protect it), you cannot penalize the profits from investing and take away the fruits of their labor to such an extent that they are better off doing nothing with their labor and wealth than they are to exploit both for their and their communities betterment. Why would a person or company make an investment whose efforts are taxed to such an extent that if they simply purchased gold or other commodity and did nothing, they would make more off the increase in value due to inflation, than the profits from investing?
Here is an example; we need massive expansion to our aging power grid. Power companies are regulated extensively but guaranteed a profit (about 10%). If you have money to invest and after you pay the taxes on your dividends the real profit from investing in a power company is a modest but because power companies are government protected monopolies such investments are fairly safe. This investment would allow the power company to expand and make improvements. Now if you invested that same money in gold, you have an even safer haven for your wealth and the return is greater than the investing in a power company. There is not growth, but the wealth is protected against inflation; the growth and payout from the power company doesn't even cover real inflation. Obviously the incentive is no longer to invest but to protect wealth and assets. It is the government regulation that severely restricts the profit that can be made by power companies, and takes the profit that can be made by investors, and inflates the value of dollars, which has made conditions such that those with wealth are better off sitting on it that putting it to work. Since we now punish people who invest and work hard, and reward hoarding wealth and doing nothing, people are no longer investing and working hard, but are doing everything they can to protect what assets (wealth) they have.
Eliminating those who would protect the very moral fabric of our society is essential for liberals and the Wall Street - Government Complex. The ruling elite do not garner wealth through effort but by graft. They make the less fortunate dependent upon the largess of the ruling elite to buy their votes so they may remain in power and suck the wealth and labor from those who labor. Explain why congress and its employees are exempt from insider trading laws. Explain why the ruling elite guaranteed known bad mortgages, and rewarded bankers and themselves with massive amounts of money at the expense of the taxpayer. Explain why it is acceptable to have generations of people living on the dole. Explain why with more and more spending and more and more government control that the actual output of government education continues to get worse not better, especially for those who live dependent upon the government for their every need. Explain why they have restructured and tried to change the purpose of government to supply the needs of everybody, rather than provide protection for the rights of all individuals equally. Explain why we reward sloth and envy and punish self-reliance and effort. Obviously those who would return the US to a system where effort, enterprise, productivity, and self-discipline were rewarded and bad governance, sloth, and envy were not rewarding, would result in the ruling elite losing both wealth and power. The protection of individual liberty, although historically prove to enhancing a societies overall wealth and well being, diminishes central control and power, the ruling elite would rather all lose liberty than they have less power.
It took a little while longer than I expected but the ruling elite in DC have succeeded in eliminating or silencing all the presidential candidates who are willing to address the true problems facing this country. Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, and all the third party candidates have effectively been disqualified by the media and ruling elite in Washington. Even though Ron Paul, is still taking 2nd place in polls, and the people resonate with his message, the press and ruling elite will not address the issues he and others running who represent half of Americans who don't live off the government. All these candidates the collectivists don't want you exposed to share a common belief. They believe it is moral and just, and have a willingness, to hold the government accountable for its spending and seek to reestablish the basic moral formula that made this country great, based on moral values that has historically proven to provide the highest standard of living for the most people, a moral formula that so called progressives hate and refuse to acknowledge or address. That moral formula is simple, Effort should lead to reward as often as possible.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Liberty vs the Left
Equality, Fairness, and Ethics
By Tom Rhodes, 12/2/2011
How do liberals (leftists) compare to those who believe in liberty and smaller government when it comes to Equality, Fairness, and Ethics.
Leftist yell that those who want smaller government are against equality, we are not. While generally recognising the benefits in Scandinavian-style homogeneity: crime tends to be lower, people are less stressed etc. The problem is a content size country like the USA, consisting of a vast and diverse population, is not and cannot be homogenous; nor will the policies and laws that work for a small homogenous society work for ours. The primay objection however is is not that egalitarianism is undesirable in itself, but that the policies required to enforce in involve a disproportionate loss of liberty and prosperity, Historically outside small nations with homogenous populations, egalitarian laws when implemented result in an overall lower standard of living and poorer quality of life for the society as a whole (look at USSR, Cuba, even the USA since implementing the War on Poverty).
The left accuses those who want smaller government as being against "fairness." The problem is that the left doesn't want fairness, they want socialism. If you promote more government, please explain how it's fair that public sector employees get paid more than private sector employees for the same jobs. Public school teachers get more than private school teachers is just one example. How is it fair to make our children and grand children pay for todays spending because we are unwilling to live within our means? How is it fair to the boy who leaves school at 16 and starts paying taxes to subsidise the one who goes to university? How about being fair to the unemployed, whom firms cannot afford to hire because of the social protection enjoyed by existing employees?
Of course the one subject the left avoids is ethics. Leftists rant and rave about how uncaring people on the right are, but when the truth is told it is they who lack ethics, and moral clarity. There is virtue in helping the poor, donating time, money to help others, but there is no virtue in being forced to do the same. Choosing to give your money to charity is meritorious; paying tax is morally neutral. Evidence is clear that, as taxes rise, and the state squeezes out civic society, people give less to good causes. It is also clear that those who believe in smaller government give more to private charity in both time and money than those who want and promote government solutions to our problems.
Equality, Fairness, and Ethics all subjects the left tries to claim superiority but when the truth is revealed the liberals support less equality, less fairness and lower moral action.
Equality, Fairness, and Ethics
By Tom Rhodes, 12/2/2011
How do liberals (leftists) compare to those who believe in liberty and smaller government when it comes to Equality, Fairness, and Ethics.
Leftist yell that those who want smaller government are against equality, we are not. While generally recognising the benefits in Scandinavian-style homogeneity: crime tends to be lower, people are less stressed etc. The problem is a content size country like the USA, consisting of a vast and diverse population, is not and cannot be homogenous; nor will the policies and laws that work for a small homogenous society work for ours. The primay objection however is is not that egalitarianism is undesirable in itself, but that the policies required to enforce in involve a disproportionate loss of liberty and prosperity, Historically outside small nations with homogenous populations, egalitarian laws when implemented result in an overall lower standard of living and poorer quality of life for the society as a whole (look at USSR, Cuba, even the USA since implementing the War on Poverty).
The left accuses those who want smaller government as being against "fairness." The problem is that the left doesn't want fairness, they want socialism. If you promote more government, please explain how it's fair that public sector employees get paid more than private sector employees for the same jobs. Public school teachers get more than private school teachers is just one example. How is it fair to make our children and grand children pay for todays spending because we are unwilling to live within our means? How is it fair to the boy who leaves school at 16 and starts paying taxes to subsidise the one who goes to university? How about being fair to the unemployed, whom firms cannot afford to hire because of the social protection enjoyed by existing employees?
Of course the one subject the left avoids is ethics. Leftists rant and rave about how uncaring people on the right are, but when the truth is told it is they who lack ethics, and moral clarity. There is virtue in helping the poor, donating time, money to help others, but there is no virtue in being forced to do the same. Choosing to give your money to charity is meritorious; paying tax is morally neutral. Evidence is clear that, as taxes rise, and the state squeezes out civic society, people give less to good causes. It is also clear that those who believe in smaller government give more to private charity in both time and money than those who want and promote government solutions to our problems.
Equality, Fairness, and Ethics all subjects the left tries to claim superiority but when the truth is revealed the liberals support less equality, less fairness and lower moral action.
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