AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Taking wealth from people who lawfully earned it AND giving it to people who did not lawfully earn it, is called THEFT TAXATION.

Tea parties being held by people that don't understand why the original tea party was held.

The tea party was over taxation without representation. I guess some people don't know how to write their congressmen and senators. Their sites often have polls.

Lightwizard wrote:

The tea party was over taxation without representation. I guess some people don't know how to write their congressmen and senators. Their sites often have polls.

The Boston Tea Party was a protest against government tyranny involving coercive acts by England of which the tea issue was the final straw. The Colonists saw these acts as a violation of their natural and constitutional rights and a violation of their colonial charters.

The current tea parties are likewise a violation of a government that the people are seeing as increasingly coercive, unconstitional, and commiting violations of our natural/unalienable rights.

What you heard about the robot, there are surely thousands of these types of things, all added up would be billions. Foxfyre, have you heard about the tea parties being held around the country now? More and more people, I think, are getting fed up with working hard only to pay more to the government, then to see what they are doing with it now. Like Giving it to ACORN, doesn't that frost you? And we can all rejoice as we send our money into an IRS headed by a tax cheat. These people have no shame, whatsoever.

So now it's "from the productive to the nonproductive?" ROFL

Those bankers and finance company executives ran our economy into the ground, and you have the mitigated gall to talk about who is "productive?"

A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS
APRIL 1, 2009

Our Problem Is Immorality

Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. You say, "That's a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You'd better be prepared to back it up with evidence!" I'll try with a few questions for you to answer.

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends.

In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else. If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.

The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda. A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind's most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another? A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government.

Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes. As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes? In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.

I am all too afraid that a historian, a hundred years from now, will footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed private property rights and limited government but it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs -- arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Predictions
1) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at me for posting this.
2) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at Walter Williams for writing it.
3) There will be one or more snotty remarks directed at anybody who posts any agreement with it.
4 The MACeans will read and understand the thesis.
5 If the MALs read the piece at all, most will not understand it or will intentionally misrepresent or misstate what it says.
6. At least one strawman will be posted to divert from the point of the thesis

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another?

No disagreement is fine. Encouraged even so long as it is rationally presented as rebuttal rather than ad hominem.

No it is not a bad question. It is a perfectly good and a perfectly reasonable question. It is a well structured, well articulated question than can quite easily be answered with a yes or no.

The question is simple.
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another?

Williams does, however, in his argument, explain why it is so difficult for some to answer and retain their intellectual honesty.

I can quite easily say without qualification: "No. It is not."

So what say you?

I answer 'yes' to both his questions, as that is what the Social Contract requires; it has nothing at all to do with Slavery, which is just his version of Appealing to Extremes.