Posted on 11/22/2002 2:28:42 PM PST by rwfok
Republican economist and author Walter Williams told a group of Oklahomans on Thursday that the United States is headed toward totalitarianism. Williams, a nationally syndicated columnist and occasional substitute host for radio personality Rush Limbaugh, spoke at a noon luncheon at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. His presentation was sponsored by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
Williams discussed the decline of capitalism and expansion of government. He compared government taxing and spending to theft and rape.
"As time goes by, you and I own less and less of our most valuable property -- namely ourselves and the fruits of our labor," Williams said. "We do not decide how the fruits of our labor will be used. Someone else makes that decision."
Williams, an economics professor at George Mason University, acknowledged the need for government to provide national defense, police services and a few other limited roles, but said most government spending is a publicly sponsored armed robbery.
"Both acts involve taking the property of one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong," Williams said. "The only way the American government can give a person a dollar is -- through threats, intimidation and coercion -- to take that money from somebody else. Just because you vote to take someone's property doesn't make it right."
Williams said the United States became the richest nation in the world because it was founded on the free enterprise system. That status has led many Americans to give up their freedoms to stamp out social problems, Williams said.
"Free enterprise in our country is threatened today not because of its failure but because of its success," Williams said. "In the name of other ideas ... we have abandoned many personal liberties. The ultimate end to this process is totalitarianism."
Williams said the slow growth of the federal government through increased taxation is taking away liberties bit by bit.
Williams said he would like to see government put a limit on spending.
And thats a bad thing?
Sure is funny how you always seem to show up just in time to give the JBT point of view. Just what is your vocation besides FedGov schill?
Heads up! Walter Williams will be filling in for Rush on Friday, 11/29.
I and two other engineers here at a midwestern utility spent all day earlier this week surveying the boundary of a piece of utility land that will become a "Blue Karner Butterfly Land Bank", this being a "bank" of butterfly habitat that will allow an equal area of land to be used for utility projects, thus destroying the butterfly habitat there.
I think we are all doomed!
Getting under your very thin skin.
Do tell. I sent this article with the following comment to my not-quite-16-year-old twins with the following commentary:
Williams is one of the very few who speaks the truth and calls things by their proper names. And nothing else will bring this home to you more clearly than to look at what’s taken from the first paycheck you get. The real question becomes: “At what point did I become a slave? When I had ten percent of what I earned taken away from me? Twenty five percent? Did I start wearing chains when the government took 35% of everything I earned? How about 50%? At what point do I realize that my life really doesn’t belong to me?“
Needless to say, we have interesting dinner table conversations, and our kids Get It bigtime. So what's the weather like in your Utopia? Care to comment?
If you read him carefully, you'll fine that he is in favor of secession.
Regional identity has nothing to do with it.
I'd be more interested in your thoughts concerning his arguments rather than your feelings concerning the Cato Institute.
That might be true, but the reason to oppose their existence is that their establishment was unconstitutional. They all address states' concerns.
Great quote!
You just wrote your own epitaph. I hope you live long enough to see it.
That nugget of truth will fall on deaf ears.
Or dead ones, given our present course.
I say...And why does that make him strange? He's absolutley right. The South had every Constitutional right to secede. That is why all the southern leaders were not tried for treason. They were doing what is and was Constitutional. Read the Federalist and the ANTI Federalist papers and you will see that many states before they were willing to join the Union wanted the right to break up the union if it got too powerful. What the South did was Constituionally correct.
YOU ARE WRONG!!!!!!!
I read his articles regularly there. The man is a very qualified economist and is truly one of the great thinkers on Capitalism.
He is one of my favorites anyway.
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