ArlJim78
03-27-2010, 11:48 AM
This piece is great, a must read. (http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/coercive_charity_destroys_the.html)
Read it, print it out, post it on your wall, memorize it.
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After the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Senate's health care bill (without changes because they could not craft and pass a bill of their own), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that the effort reflected American's founding declaration of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
A society that compels each individual to provide for the personal happiness of one's neighbor, which can come only from selling one's labor or one's private property, and then handing those earnings over by confiscatory taxes, is a society with less individual freedom or liberty. At the current bankrupting levels of benevolence that comprise Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, this health care log will no doubt pulverize every bone in the camel. The destruction of our great nation -- what the enemies of America could not accomplish by war, we are doing to ourselves by misplaced compassion.
We are not a collective. Nor are we slaves or servants to each other. While we hold many things in common, we must keep our hands off that from which all goodness and compassion come: the individual.
We are to be a nation of individuals, not only in principle, but practice. And what makes an individual real is the granting and protection of boundaries that surround each individual -- boundaries that secure each individual's freedom and happiness. Without such strong, inviolate boundaries, freedom to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is impossible.
__________________________________________________ _____
That last part is important. our country is (was) great because of how it protected the rights of the individual. As we have seen, the more we move in the direction of favoring the state at the expense of the individual, the this country falls apart.
more at the link
Read it, print it out, post it on your wall, memorize it.
______________________________________
After the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Senate's health care bill (without changes because they could not craft and pass a bill of their own), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that the effort reflected American's founding declaration of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
A society that compels each individual to provide for the personal happiness of one's neighbor, which can come only from selling one's labor or one's private property, and then handing those earnings over by confiscatory taxes, is a society with less individual freedom or liberty. At the current bankrupting levels of benevolence that comprise Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, this health care log will no doubt pulverize every bone in the camel. The destruction of our great nation -- what the enemies of America could not accomplish by war, we are doing to ourselves by misplaced compassion.
We are not a collective. Nor are we slaves or servants to each other. While we hold many things in common, we must keep our hands off that from which all goodness and compassion come: the individual.
We are to be a nation of individuals, not only in principle, but practice. And what makes an individual real is the granting and protection of boundaries that surround each individual -- boundaries that secure each individual's freedom and happiness. Without such strong, inviolate boundaries, freedom to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is impossible.
__________________________________________________ _____
That last part is important. our country is (was) great because of how it protected the rights of the individual. As we have seen, the more we move in the direction of favoring the state at the expense of the individual, the this country falls apart.
more at the link