What Did You Say?

Trick or treat!!  The word, according to Neil Cavuto, is that the gazillions of food stamp recipients across the land are to have their “benefits” reduced as of November 1st, and that the Department of Homeland Security is gearing up for widespread riots.

Such wonders abound in our neo-socialist dystopia of “hope & change.”  For the past several years, the Obama administration has aggressively sought to solidify and expand the democrat party’s grip on power by encouraging as many people as they possibly can to sign up for food stamps and other government programs, to make dependency on government a way of life for more and more generations of future voters.  For most readers, this is by now an elementary fact of political life.

Problem is, the free-lunch tree is being stripped of goodies very quickly…

Remember that story from about a month ago, where the socialist regime in Venezuela was stationing armed troops inside toilet paper factories, in order to enforce production and distribution quotas, due to severe shortages resulting from price controls?  Seems that centrally-planned economies can never satisfy human demands for goods and services, no matter how many times central planning is tried; nor does it matter who is doing the planning.

Government’s proper role is not to feed & take care of people, nor could it do so adequately even if that was its job.  Instead, government should promote the general welfare by helping to create conditions which allow people to prosper in freedom–chiefly, by protecting individual rights, especially property rights.

To repeat a quote often attributed to our country’s first president, George Washington(a man who knew a little something about the proper role of limited government–he refused the suggestion by some that he be crowned king of the new nation of America, and rebuked those who suggested it):  “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence–it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Today, we are “evolving” into more and more of a democracy, rather than the republic once cherished by those who fought so long and hard for liberty.  Increasingly, the masses of people can simply vote themselves less personal responsibility, and more of the property produced by others, by electing democrats to use the force of government to redistribute goods.  How much longer do you suppose before stuff here is inadequately produced at gunpoint, like in Venezuela?

Eminent black economist Walter Williams points out that during the time when chattel slavery was legal on this continent, there was (in addition to the usual plantation-bound, field hand arrangement) a sort of journeyman category of skilled slaves who actually lived rather independently from their owners.  They plied their particular specialized trades according to their own comings and goings, and often had families and homes separate from their masters; however, the extent of their being slaves in bondage was that their masters still owned them, and owned what they produced.  Their earnings were turned over to their masters, who allowed them to keep enough to maintain their separate livelihoods.  If they tried to evade this relatively liberal arrangement in any way, they could be legally dealt with, and harshly, their owners resorting to bounties and whatnot if necessary.

Compare such a category of chattel slave of yesteryear with the taxpayer of today–is there really that much difference?

The more skilled and productive the taxpayer, the more of his or her product that the voting democrat masters seize, leaving him or her (if the taxpaying slave happens to be very resourceful) enough to enjoy a tidy or even splendiferous separate existence, yes, but the arrangement really is no different in essential character.  We also have some very wealthy and highly skilled slaves today, owned by a multitude of democrat voters helping themselves to upwards of half of what the slaves produce.

So all of this can just continue on indefinitely, right?  No?

You mean to tell me the takers are vastly out-breeding and out-voting the makers?  You’re saying the makers are becoming disillusioned and discouraged?

Yes indeedy, an Investor’s Business Daily headline from yesterday reads: “Welfare, Not Full-Time Work, Is Now America’s No. 1 Occupation.”

Trick or treat!!