Where the Left Went Wrong
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.”
- Alexander Tyler
There is, in and of itself, nothing wrong with the idea that one should help their neighbors. In the viewpoint of a working society, one does not exist in a vacuum, and if your neighbor is ready to break into your house and raid your larder because he has no food of his own and no way to get it, then this benefits neither the man with food or the man without. But. Yes, you knew there was going to be a but here, didn’t you? It is wrong, in and of itself, to believe that it is right and good for the man with no food to go to another man with authority to use force and ask that man to take food from his neighbor with the threat of force backing up the demand where the neighbor does not have the authority (or some would say the Right) to answer that threat of force with his own.
That, however, is what the American populace does on a daily basis by turning to government and demanding more money for themselves because they have “need.â€
Now, looking at that previous statement, there are many people in this country, rich and poor alike, who would say “but what’s wrong with that?†Far too many people see the money as simply government money and don’t consider beyond that point. They fail to look beyond the government’s coffers to see the source of that money.
Government, in and of itself, has no money. It is a hollow entity filled—a framework created by the Constitution. It is filled with the intentions and desires of the American people (supposedly limited by the Constitution) and fueled by money given to it by the people. Within the framework of the Constitution, the Federal Government (and, on a state by state basis, the State governments within the framework of their constitutions) is authorized to use force and violence to enforce its edicts.
So what does this have to do with the title of this particular column? Go back and re-read the quote by Alexander Tyler. Nearly every time you hear someone saying that something should be done about the state of the “poor†within this country, you hear them saying the Government should do something about it. Now, I will grant you that some people do this out of simple ignorance. They don’t think beyond that they have been led to believe that Government is there to spare them the necessity of dealing with the repercussions of their own actions. Far too many, however, know exactly what they’re doing and see this as perfectly acceptable.
They see it as perfectly acceptable to go the Federal Government and demand more money (or goods or services) for their particular “need.†They do this with the full knowledge that the Government has the full authority to obtain those funds by force from other citizens in the country if those citizens balk at donating “their share.â€
And that is where the Left has gone wrong. Rather than working the “poor†and the “disadvantaged†to improve their state, the turn to the Government, demand that it’s the place of the Government to do this, and demanding that the Government throw money at the problem. They are asking their Government to take money from some of its citizens and transfer for it to other citizens.
All of that being said, I understand and accept the necessary evil of Government and taxation to fund its duties. I understand that there will be some things the Government does with which I do not necessarily agree. For decades, this country existed with the poor turning to their neighbors and asking for aid rather than requesting that Government give them the money. It wasn’t until the early years of the Twentieth Century that the Income Tax was introduced and it wasn’t until World War II that withholding was introduced (and was supposed to go away after WWII).
Somewhere in the Twentieth Century, it became acceptable (through complacency and/or apathy from those with more money and malicious, misguided, and/or ignorant desire from those without) to ask the Government to take money from one segment of the population and redistribute it to another. Along with this transition in viewpoint came less of a reliance on societal safeguards (be they secular or religious) and more of a reliance on governmental safeguards.
To sum up (as I’ve rambled horribly here) and to make the point plan, the Left went wrong when it began believing that it was acceptable to make one portion of the population take care of another through threat of force. No matter how you break it down, obfuscate it, or otherwise attempt to redirect attention away from it, every time the Government obtains money from its citizens, it does so with the barrel of a gun. It does it with the implicit threat of a bandit: do it or I’ll shoot you.
And putting the threat of violence into the equation, in many cases, has the result of removing reason from the equation.