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Our National Blind Spot
American Thinker ^ | February 06, 2010 | Mark W. Hendrickson

Posted on 02/05/2010 10:39:28 PM PST by neverdem

Nobody will dispute the fact that there are differences between private and public behavior. We can all think of things that we do privately that we would never consider doing in public. 

This holds true in politics, too. Specifically, the vast majority of Americans would never dream of stealing from another person, yet they have no compunction about wanting government to take property from some citizens to give it to others.

Friends with whom we would entrust the keys to our house and all our worldly goods are often enthusiastic supporters of government programs that redistribute wealth. Few of us would imagine that a Washington lobbyist would peek out his window at home, wait for his neighbors to leave, and then sneak into their houses to take their possessions. The very image is absurd. And yet, those same lobbyists spend their working hours trying to persuade politicians to grant favors to them and send the bill to someone else.

Decades ago, the oldest free-market think tank, The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., published Lewis Love's short parable, "A King of Long Ago." In the story, 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."

Besides illustrating the ideal of the rule of law -- in which everyone, regardless of wealth, rank, and position, is equally constrained from infringing the rights of others -- this little parable shows the inconsistency of believing that private citizens should respect private property, but government leaders need not. Is that which is personally immoral politically moral? 

What causes otherwise-honest people to condone the political plunder and redistribution of personal property? Immorality? That's too harsh for my taste. I prefer to say that there is a blind spot in their thinking.

Maybe what we're dealing with is mob psychology. Perhaps it's rationalization. "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." 

Perhaps the explanation for this blind spot is self-delusion. We see nothing wrong with receiving benefits from the state. What we remain blissfully unconscious of is that the state has nothing to give us but what it takes from our fellow citizens. Indeed, Bastiat called the state "the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." It is a dream, a myth, and a fiction to believe that government gives you wealth out of its own productive bounty. Governments don't produce wealth; they only take it and redistribute it, substituting the political judgment of the few (the governing elite) for the economic verdict of everyone (a genuinely democratic process) acting in free markets. 

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? If the state's would-be victims resist being plundered, the state will retaliate by confiscating even more of their property and/or incarcerating them. The democratic process rests on force and the implied threat of force every step of the way. 

We don't bat an eye anymore when someone glibly proposes "spreading the wealth." In fact, many Americans enjoy spreading the wealth, as long as it isn't their own. In a recent survey, three out of four Americans agreed that Obama and Congress should raises taxes on that minority of Americans with annual incomes above $200,000. Apparently, most Americans believe that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and their minions have more of a right to spend those dollars than the citizens who earned them. 

If you think this line of thought is crazy, then let me ask you a question: What percentage of a person's honest income should he or she be allowed to keep? The only guidelines I am aware of are "all of it" (the original American way, since income taxes were unconstitutional until 1913) or nothing beyond what anybody else (except the governing elite) can keep, according to the communist principle "from each according to his ability to each according to his need."

Between those two polar extremes, any percentage one chooses would be arbitrary. In practice, the degree to which property is redistributed depends on whatever shifting political coalition has enough votes -- enough power -- at any given moment. Stripped of grandiose pretenses and specious idealism, contemporary political life has descended into a constant, contentious squabble to see who gets what at the expense of whom.

Somehow, we're going to have to find a way to correct this ethical blind spot if we ever hope to avoid national bankruptcy and to live in greater harmony than we do today.

Mark Hendrickson teaches economics at Grove City College and is Fellow for Economic & Social Policy at the College's Center for Vision & Values.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: communism; lping; redistribution
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1 posted on 02/05/2010 10:39:28 PM PST by neverdem
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To: neverdem
yet they have no compunction about wanting government to take property from some citizens to give it to others.

Because that's what redistribution of wealth does--it takes money from you to "sustain the necessary things, like roads and bridges!" and then it's no longer your money, it's OUR money.

This is the mindset that we've all gotten used to, and that's what the redistributionists bank on. How different would things be if we had to write a check to the government EVERY TIME we got a paycheck, to give the government "its share".

2 posted on 02/05/2010 10:42:24 PM PST by Darkwolf377 (Bostonian conservative, atheist prolifer)
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To: neverdem

The Progressive Movement has bamboozled America into abandoning its principles of basic inalienable human rights and the rule of law.


3 posted on 02/05/2010 10:55:34 PM PST by TigersEye (It's the Marxism, stupid! ... And they call themselves Progressives.)
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To: Darkwolf377

A biblical model of legitimate human government allows for taxes.


4 posted on 02/05/2010 10:57:13 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: HiTech RedNeck
A biblical model of legitimate human government allows for taxes.

Gee, yet another reason why I'm an atheist!

5 posted on 02/05/2010 10:59:24 PM PST by Darkwolf377 (Bostonian conservative, atheist prolifer)
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To: Darkwolf377

Swear to God?


6 posted on 02/05/2010 11:00:25 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: neverdem
BRAVO! Tea Partiers, and conservatives should focus on first principle: the federal taxing power must be limited and refined permanently through a Constitutional Amendment. The progressive income tax now cannot be reconciled with the takings clause. The only way to starve the beast is to remove the power to pick winners and losers through the tax code. Politicians must be neutered in their ability to decree what is "fair" redistribution through fiat. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Property aka "Happiness"
7 posted on 02/05/2010 11:02:16 PM PST by LALALAW (one of the asses whose sick of our "ruling" classes)
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To: neverdem

It is because we’ve raised generations of people who think they are owed things from government. It doesn’t matter to them who pays the bill as long it isn’t them.


8 posted on 02/05/2010 11:08:49 PM PST by DB
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To: HiTech RedNeck

If God asks 10%, government should get much less. Our government resembles the stuff floating in sewers more than it does anything biblical.


9 posted on 02/05/2010 11:16:33 PM PST by GeronL (http://tyrannysentinel.blogspot.com)
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To: neverdem

The dumbing down of America.

Unfortunately, too many of our citizens don’t know where government gets its money.

Recall that woman in Detroit who said “money comes from Obama?”


10 posted on 02/05/2010 11:23:19 PM PST by onyx (BE A MONTHLY DONOR - I AM)
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To: DB

Yeh, it’s really what I call “lottery-syndrome”.

People (who don’t know basic statistics) get sucked in by the dream of getting more than they give. Their number will get picked and they’ll win a million for $5.

On that tax thing, everybody’s instinct is to avoid paying at all cost, then try every way they can to get “free” money back from the gov’t. They forget that gov’t can’t pay more than comes in, plus gov’t needs operating costs, so they basically have to keep themselves paupers in order to qualify to get more than they give.

Little do they realize that they could get some dopey job where they can loaf and wind up with more at the end of the day. Doing away with all gov’t handouts simply cracks the whip and forces those types to begrudgingly get jobs.

I heard a hilarious moment one time when a woman was reading a newspaper story about this “poor woman” on gov’t assistance, who was moaning that she was so desperate she might have to “go get that office job”, and she didn’t want to have to be away from her kids.

All these programs can end immediately and things will roll along fine, as the prospect of lower government spending would mean a real long-term prospect of lower tax burdens on all citizens and all businesses, which would be only stimulus that will actually work.


11 posted on 02/05/2010 11:25:57 PM PST by PieterCasparzen (Huguenot)
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To: neverdem

This is a GREAT post. Thanks for the same.


12 posted on 02/05/2010 11:28:33 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: neverdem

An excellent article, but there’s a better answer to the question of how much government has the right to take in taxes. It’s not all or nothing. Government is perfectly moral to take taxes to pay for legitimate functions as enshrined in the US Constitution. It only becomes theft when tax money is given to people who are not otherwise earning it in service to the country. Welfare, for example, is immoral. Paying folks to build roads, on the other hand, is a legitimate, moral role of government.


13 posted on 02/05/2010 11:52:32 PM PST by CitizenUSA (Governor Palin backs RINO extraordinaire Juan McPain!)
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To: neverdem

Bump


14 posted on 02/05/2010 11:58:06 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
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To: CitizenUSA

Private industry could probably run circles around those who build roads on the taxpayer’s dime.


15 posted on 02/06/2010 12:18:35 AM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: wardaddy; Joe Brower; Cannoneer No. 4; Criminal Number 18F; Dan from Michigan; Eaker; Jeff Head; ...
When Windmills Don’t Spin, People Expect Some Answers

The People's Historian? Howard Zinn was a master of agitprop, not history Listen to the Audio Version (MP3) in comment# 1. IIRC, MP3 media can be downloaded to IPods. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. This might be useful for young heads full of mush.

Backing down on climate change

Walter Russell Mead: Why Climate Science Is On Trial IMHO, it's a very good essay about how and why any science subject gets politicized, especially "climate science."

Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

16 posted on 02/06/2010 1:02:24 AM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: Fester Chugabrew

Fester C: “Private industry could probably run circles around those who build roads on the taxpayer’s dime.”

Maybe so, but that misses the point that government expenditures for things like roads is both moral and constitutional. Public use means available for the public to use, not just serving some government goal.

It’s clear that Democrats believe they are free to do pretty much whatever they want. They really aren’t restrained by the US Constitution at all, and that’s a major problem that freedom-loving Americans must address.

My point is that there’s a clear line. Once you start giving the government the right to take money for any cause that isn’t plainly enumerated in the US Constitution, there is nothing they can’t ultimately take, and that means no freedom.


17 posted on 02/06/2010 1:10:45 AM PST by CitizenUSA (Governor Palin backs RINO extraordinaire Juan McPain!)
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To: neverdem

INDEED.


18 posted on 02/06/2010 2:27:50 AM PST by Quix ( POL Ldrs quotes fm1900 TRAITORS http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81)
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To: PieterCasparzen
They forget that gov’t can’t pay more than comes in...

Well...unless it borrows or prints more, which of course devalues all of the money supply.

19 posted on 02/06/2010 4:10:32 AM PST by highlander_UW (When you have a clown for president it shouldn't be a shock when his admin is a circus)
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To: neverdem; sickoflibs; bamahead; rabscuttle385

Excellent


20 posted on 02/06/2010 5:27:49 AM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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