Short and Sweet Blog

I’m sure that you all remember the giant brouhaha which ensued after the President said:

While I agree with the actual words which the President used, I profoundly disagree with his unspoken agenda.

The government of the United States was organized to protect the society, not to change or manage it. This seems to be entirely lost upon our President. He suggests that we owe something for the opportunities which we have had. I couldn’t agree more. He implies that we should be prepared to pay more in taxes in order to discharge this obligation. I could not disagree more. Taxes are the price we pay for a government to protect and serve us as a nation, not to serve us as individuals. It is only as a collective that our government is intended to provide for the general welfare. Otherwise the term ‘welfare’ would not have been modified by the adjective general. Our system, the one which the President actually says is so great, is based upon freedom. We are free to cooperate and compete among ourselves as we see the need. The government was not formed in order to mold our society or we as citizens, it is this free society within which free individuals thrive which is to be protected by the government.

The apparent source of the disconnect is that President Obama equates the government with American society generally. Therefore, he concludes that if we owe something to society we pay for it in taxes. The dual nature of our free society, one which fosters both cooperation and competition as the people see fit, is the very foundation of the system. It is not a part of the system to be redesigned or overcome. It is not a good which the government provides and which should therefore be taxed, it is something which the government protects and is obligated so to do. It is the sort of spontaneous and informally organized caring, sharing and cooperating which is at the very heart of our national character and will remain so so long as freedom reigns. It is fostered by the very freedom we have to either share or not share, as we ourselves see fit. It is not fostered by the heavy hand of the government. In fact the heavy hand of government will tear it apart.

Read this account in which a fellow blogger tells of one informal and voluntary association and a transfer between a businessman and a young student as told by the student. Had the businessman been required by the government to provide money or a job for the student it would likely have engendered resentment on the business owner’s part and the student would have taken it as his due. The results would have been wholly negative other than that the money would have ended up in the same place. Resentment and entitlement are not emotions to be fostered. Generosity and gratitude are. I wonder whether the President sees this or whether he is so focused in transferring wealth from one group of Americans to another that he is blinded by the beauty of his preferred ends and is unaware of or unwilling to see the moral questionableness and destructiveness of the means.

This entry was posted on July 19, 2012 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Clash of Worldviews, Politics. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: American Society, Business Owners, higher taxes, Hunter Baker, President Obama, Redistribution of Wealth, voluntary association