{"id":7866,"date":"2012-06-05T16:45:50","date_gmt":"2012-06-05T23:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=7866"},"modified":"2012-06-07T11:44:43","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T18:44:43","slug":"welfare-state-immoral-and-irredeemable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2012\/06\/welfare-state-immoral-and-irredeemable\/","title":{"rendered":"Welfare State: Immoral and Irredeemable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Welfareby Walter E. Williams –
\nBenjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: \u201cOnly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.\u201d John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: \u201cOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.\u201d Are today\u2019s Americans virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let\u2019s think it through with a few questions.<\/p>\n

Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She\u2019s hungry and in need of shelter and medical attention. To help the woman, I walk up to you using intimidation and threats and demand that you give me $200. Having taken your money, I then purchase food, shelter and medical assistance for the woman. Would I be guilty of a crime? A moral person would answer in the affirmative. I\u2019ve committed theft by taking the property of one person to give to another. <\/p>\n

Most Americans would agree that it would be theft regardless of what I did with the money. Now comes the hard part. Would it still be theft if I were able to get three people to agree that I should take your money? What if I got 100 people to agree \u2013 100,000 or 200 million people? What if instead of personally taking your money to assist the woman, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use Internal Revenue Service agents to take your money? In other words, does an act that\u2019s clearly immoral and illegal when done privately become moral when it is done legally and collectively? Put another way, does legality establish morality? Before you answer, keep in mind that slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazi\u2019s Nuremberg Laws were legal; and the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people. The moral question is whether it\u2019s right to take what belongs to one person to give to another to whom it does not belong.<\/p>\n

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong. I personally believe that assisting one\u2019s fellow man in need by reaching into one\u2019s own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable. Doing the same by reaching into another\u2019s pockets is despicable, dishonest and worthy of condemnation. Some people call governmental handouts charity, but charity and legalized theft are entirely two different things. But as far as charity is concerned, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, said, \u201cCharity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.\u201d To my knowledge, the Constitution has not been amended to include charity as a legislative duty of Congress.<\/p>\n

Our current economic crisis, as well as that of Europe, is a direct result of immoral conduct. Roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of our federal budget can be described as Congress\u2019 taking the property of one American and giving it to another. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly half of federal spending. Then there are corporate welfare and farm subsidies and thousands of other spending programs, such as food stamps, welfare and education. According to a 2009 Census Bureau report, nearly 139 million Americans \u2013 46 percent \u2013 receive handouts from one or more federal programs, and nearly 50 percent have no federal income tax obligations.<\/p>\n

In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It\u2019s not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that\u2019s delivered us to where we are. It\u2019s about how we pay for it \u2013 namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.<\/p>\n

Ayn Rand, in her novel \u201cAtlas Shrugged,\u201d reminded us that \u201cwhen you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good.\u201d<\/p>\n

HT: WND<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Walter E. Williams – Benjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: \u201cOnly a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.\u201d John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: \u201cOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[87,72,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-leftism","category-moral-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}