Our National Blind Spot

American Thinker ^ | February 06, 2010 | Mark W. Hendrickson

[metmom]

Ping

[firebrand]

Agreed. It is partly the partisan divide that has created the all-or-nothing mentaliy on both sides and prevents moderation.

[iceskater]

Awesome article. Thank you so much for posting it.

[bamahead]

Many reason that democracy somehow sanctifies and legitimates the forcible redistribution of wealth. For them, democracy sanitizes and civilizes the process of taking someone's honestly earned property. They don't perceive this as robbery.



Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
View past Libertarian pings here

[stephenjohnbanker]

“Many reason that democracy somehow sanctifies and legitimates the forcible redistribution of wealth. For them, democracy sanitizes and civilizes the process of taking someone’s honestly earned property. They don’t perceive this as robbery. “

When I was 25, in 1979, I was fortunate to get a job that paid $8500.00 per month. When I got my first paycheck,(payable every 2 weeks) the net was 1999.00, out of 4250.00.
I went to the comptroller, and asked him what happened to the rest of my money, and that I expected about 3000. You should have heard him laugh.

[RipSawyer]

“A biblical model of legitimate human government allows for taxes.”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

So did the original constitution, but it strictly limited how they could be applied. Simply taking a portion of the working man’s pay was not allowed.

[csmusaret]

This article is total hogwash. Everyone knows that the Government has a gold mine out in Colorado or someplace. Whenever they need more money to give to the people who won’t work, they just put on an extra shift. If that weren’t true the Government would be forced to take the money at the point of a gun from the people who do work. No one actually believes our benevolent Government would ever do such a thing. Do they?

[bamahead]

They don't percieve this as robbery.

It's actually worse than that. Many of these otherwise honest people have been conditioned to think that a private business or even a public corporate interest using a human being as a source of labor is somehow robbery or a transgression against the human.

It's as if they don't grasp that said resource is being compensated (sometimes on several levels) for their labor. Their conditioning concludes that the business/corporate interest is taking advantage of them almost to the point of calling it 'slavery' (many do), because the fruits of the individuals labor can enrich other individuals, who are also laboring toward the same goals. They fail to grasp that those fruits also enrich the individual who is performing the labor, and who in many cases is given room for growth and advancement in both their compensation and social status, provided they perform to a level that pleases their employer. This self direction and ownership by the individual is another aspect that many of these people are conditioned to recoil against.

It's a conditioned anti-capitalist response that only the state can properly service the needs of the citizen. Therefore, the labor must enrich the state, not individuals, because only the state can properly redistribute this from those with ability to those with their percieved 'need'. If a state uses the back of a laborer for gain, that's OK. The mentality is that this contributes to the collective. Even though the state is likely (as history has shown) taking even greater advantage of the laborer, and compensating him even less (if at all) than a private interest would. Since in this type of society, the importance of state is elevated above the individual, the labor is looked upon as something necessary for the state to survive, almost like a discardable consumable for the leviathan There is no room growth or self direction in such a society, because the state must control these aspects of an individual. It needs to suppress these qualities of humanity, to ensure uniform, predictable production for the purposes of planning the redistribution.

This sad and hopeless mentality can permeate among citizens only if the state has become the only means of compensation and survival for the individual. This is why (as I and many others feel) this Administration is working around the clock to destroy the value of our currency, and enact anti-business policy and law, so the system can be thrown into a tailspin, and the state can take it's rightful place (in their minds) as the sole, benevolent provider and redistributor of all things.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here!

[bamahead]

I should add as a side note - where does all of this ‘conditioning’ usually come from?

Why STATE operated education, of course!

Thanks metmom :)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[sickoflibs]

That was a big battle lost in the 1930s with Obama’s hero Roosevelt. O wants to repeat Roosevelts successes.

This conflict which is stated as black and white was muddied greatly by Social Security and Medicare. Because now seniors, a great part of the conservative Republican base are convinced it's OK to 'steal' (as the post puts it) , as long as they are told they have 'earned it', or as posted here ‘a verbal contract’, or ‘a promise’. So the socialists will always use that as an example why there really is no private property. And the seniors will be told that to keep their vote.

Fortunately this democrat strategy failed on health reform.

[sergeantdave]

” Because now seniors, a great part of the conservative Republican base are convinced it’s OK to ‘steal’ (as the post puts it)”

Some people have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars taken from them as social security payments. Are you proposing that this money not be paid back to them? If you’re saying that SS should not exist, I agree with that. If you’re saying every penny paid into SS should be given back to every person as a lump sum payment and then SS ends, I agree with that, too.

What’s your solution for people who have paid into SS their entire lives?

[sickoflibs]

RE :”Some people have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars taken from them as social security payments. Are you proposing that this money not be paid back to them? If you’re saying that SS should not exist, I agree with that. If you’re saying every penny paid into SS should be given back to every person as a lump sum payment and then SS ends, I agree with that, too.”

I am saying that like you, seniors believe and are told that it's OK to ‘steal’ young workers money, because the dead did the same to them. Do you understand how SS works? There is NO lump sum to ‘give’ back. That money is long spend by people dead. My grandmother got it for 35 years after working three. Do you know the federal government will borrow a third of this year's budget?

Your SS money was also spent on education, pork projects and rebuilding Iraq. It's gone. It's a lie that it's there to 'give back'.

[SunkenCiv]

"It's for a worthy cause," we tell ourselves, oblivious to the fact that the Eighth Commandment doesn't say "Thou shalt not steal ... except by majority vote or unless it's for the poor." ...Indeed, Bastiat called the state "the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." ...Governments don't produce wealth; they only take it and redistribute it... Many reason that democracy somehow sanctifies and legitimates the forcible redistribution of wealth. For them, democracy sanitizes and civilizes the process of taking someone's honestly earned property. They don't perceive this as robbery. But if this isn't robbery, then what is it?

Thanks neverdem. And if this isn't robbery, then what is?

[gogogodzilla]

Good post. I agree completely!

[metmom]

How else are they going to condition the unwashed masses?

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Thank you metmom.

I like Lewis Love’s short parable [mentioned in article], “A King of Long Ago.”

An artisan, a mason, and a lame beggar petition their king for aid. The artisan can’t attract enough customers to meet his sales goals, the mason isn’t getting hired very often, and the beggar isn’t receiving sufficient alms.

They implore the king to correct this unsatisfactory state of affairs. The king commands that each petitioner be given a sword. He then authorizes the three to “go forth in the land and compel those who will not voluntarily deal with them to obey their command.”

“No! No!” the three men demur. “We are men of honor and could not set upon our fellow man to compel him to our will. This we cannot do. It is you, O King, who must use the power.”

“You ask me to do that which you would not do because of honor?” questioned the king. “I, too, am an honorable man, and that which is dishonorable for you will never be less dishonorable for your king.”

[Tolik]

Thank you for the ping.

BTTT

[Tolik]

Nailed It!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)

I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.

You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on January 13, 2010.  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

 

[DuncanWaring]

Do you know the federal government will borrow a third of this year's budget?

More than that, actually.

42%, I've read.