Big Government vs Personal Responsibility

 Pseudo intellectuals enjoy creating presuppositions that exist only in their minds and then develop other smaller presuppositions that they connect to make a point. Once, when hearing a dean from a major university speaking on a subject that was barely known by any who sat in the audience, two people, as they left the lecture said; “Wasn’t he confusing on a higher level.”  To satisfy some of my readers, what I just said was, some people are so sure they are intellectual giants that when they have no real point to make on any given subject, the quicker they can confuse the subject by injecting big words, the surer they are that those hearing them will think they are smart.  One could say that what is happening with this exercise in intellectual gymnastics is people are connecting dots that have been imagined and thus when they finish drawing their picture it means nothing. We are currently thrust into an international debate about how much government is too much. The big government crowd has always lobbied for more and larger government control over every area of an individual’s life. The conservative side of the debate has always injected the concept of personal responsibility and limited government to allow for the greater amount of personal freedom, thereby leaving the risk for success or failure with the individual. The bigger government folks want to be sure that every person is guaranteed success. That is success as the bigger government defines it. The bigger government people continue to harp on the fact that the government will take care of a person from the cradle (if they can manage to be born) until the grave. There has also been a suggestion; there comes a time in every person’s life when they are no longer of value to the government so therefore, they are expendable. 

As the debate rages on, we have come to a point to understand this as being on the level of personal worth and what value can be assigned to a person’s life. The value of a person’s life is defined by the government as the value of a person to the government, not to the culture, or familial environment. When the presupposition is that a person’s value is to be determined by the government, the obvious answer is the person of no value to the government is expendable.

The personal responsibility crowd would argue for the intrinsic value of personhood from the point of conception. The value that is placed upon the embryo in the lab or in the womb would be seen as equal. Allowing for the individual freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we could conclude that granted those freedoms, each person is responsible to develop in a free society to achieve the level of success to which they would aspire. Every time the government gets involved in making decisions about the level of success allowable to individuals, they always restrict rather than release the person to achieve or fail on their own. The cries for freedom we have been hearing from the crowds in the streets of the Middle East call for personal achievement and freedom, not government control. They are crying out for less government, not more government.  The reforms that follow a change in government for those in the Middle East would be to allow for movement upward in personal goals and achievement.

On a more practical and personal level, we are seeing across our nation the states, cities, and counties struggling with the fact that government has grown too large and now it is time to pay for bigger government. As the money is no longer available to the government to pay for the grants, entitlements, and doles, cuts are required to balance the budget to the horror of some who have felt government would always provide. The solution offered by the bigger government folks is to raise taxes on the populace. The solution presented by the personal responsibility crowd is government must learn to live within its means. What we are seeing in Wisconsin and other states is the push back upon the government who promised to always supply every want and wish of the people and it can no longer carry out that promise. The answer to this dilemma is to be found in the personal responsibility of the people and not bigger government with promises to give us everything we think we need.

Ray Newman February 2011, All Rights Reserved

The struggle between producers and confiscators

The fight for liberty and freedom continues and must ever be on the minds of those of us who wish to remain free. Our founders were certain that we have the rights given to us from our Creator for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life begins at conception and deserves the opportunity to know the full assurance of life in order to one day enjoy liberty and be free to pursue happiness.

The struggle for freedom and liberty has never been between the haves and the have-nots in societies. The struggle for freedom when it has been fought has always been between the producers and the confiscators. The majority of the people of a culture are producers in order to provide for themselves and their families. As governments have been organized there is power inherent in their structure. That structure requires the producers to provide for those in power and for others the government believes should receive.

It has been my observation that people have power because it is given to them. Government has power because the people grant it. It is when the government demands power and finds ways of conscripting the power for itself, that we begin to see our liberties and freedoms diminish. When the producing class becomes smaller and the demands for what they provide grow greater is when we begin to see the agitation of the people in the culture. Again, this is not a struggle between the haves and have-nots, but a struggle between the providers and the confiscators. Government is necessary, but only in a limited sense. When we are required to depend upon government for every aspect of life is when we have lost most, if not all of our liberties and freedoms.

There are people who argue that we have gone too far down the road to make a change in our government structure. We have generations of citizens who are certain that the government must guarantee them all the necessities and wants they have in life. What seems to have been missed in all of the government promises and doles to so many is that someone somewhere has to be a producer and provide what is then being redistributed to others. We have become so callused that we continue to demand more from our government than it can ever possibly provide and we rebel at the thought of cutting government programs even though we know they cannot be sustained over several generations.

Every time there is a new government spending program there can be certainty that it will require taking from one group in order to give to another group in society. We are at the point where we now are taking from future generations in order to placate the current dole receivers. As this pattern continues, it will require a stronger and more aggressive government in order to exact larger shares from the producers and providers in life. As this pattern plays out, government becomes stronger and the people weaker with fewer freedoms. With fewer freedoms there is an almost certainty that happiness will no longer be pursued and conflict arises between citizens.

We have a ruling elite class that believes they know better how to spend our money than we do. They require from the citizens a high price in order to sustain their lifestyle and to be able to give more to the non producers in life. With every new government spending program there is a promise of money to some group, but in order to fund the program there are cuts from other programs.  The government that has already confiscated money to put into a government program then takes the money from that program in order to fund another government give-away. This type of thinking can only come from those who either do not understand what they are doing, or they are following a well planned path to bankrupt this nation in order to bring down the country into a dependent class. The dependent class would no longer be producers, but would be on the receiving end of what others have taken from them in order to provide for non producers. This path will lead into anarchy and destroy our free nation.

Ray Newman, February, All Rights Reserved

An International Crisis

Less than a month after President Obama delivered the State of the Union Speech with little or no mention of foreign policy, the revolution in the streets of Egypt has captured the headlines. In the last few weeks, the countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been toppling like a house made of playing cards. Keeping up with the list of countries who are in revolt or changing their government leaders is a challenge. Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, and Egypt have all made leadership changes or have riots in the streets calling for immediate resignations of government leaders in the last few weeks. For the most part, these countries have known upheaval and unrest for many years. While some of the nations give lip service to some form of democracy, mostly they have quasi dictators in control of the government with few freedoms allotted to the citizens. Several of these nations have also been allies of our country in the past.

As this column is being written, Hosni Mubarak, the head of the government in Cairo, Egypt, is holding on to his position. While the people of Egypt are calling for Mubarak to leave office immediately, he has transferred some power to the military and to his Vice President, but says he will remain in office until his term is completed in September. The crowds in the streets of Cairo are growing larger each day calling for him to leave now. Some people who track revolts around the world have issued warnings that behind the sudden changes in leaders in these Arab and Muslim countries could be a group known as the Muslim Brotherhood.   With a promise of democratic reforms that will restore and put in place freedoms that have not been known in many of these countries, there is a popular appeal to support these uprisings calling for change.

 Some people have drawn the comparison to what is happening in Egypt with the history of what happened in Iran when the Shah was overthrown with a promise of freedoms for the people of Iran. Once the Shah was removed, he was replaced with the strong leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini who quickly established Theocratic rule with the establishment of an Islamic Republic. Today, the sixth president of the Islamic Republic is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has used the strong power of his government to control the lives of the citizens of Iran. We would do well to remember what happened in Cuba when a young rebel by the name of Fidel Castro took to the hills to lead a revolt against the vastly corrupt Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista. The comparisons are made regarding these other government changes because each revealed plans that reported there would be more freedom and citizen involvement in everyday decisions with newer leaders, but in each case the new government leaders enslaved the people more or at the same degree as the former leaders.

In this region of the Middle East, there is one of the closest friends and allies our nation has, Israel. With the changes taking place in governments all around Israel, there is uncertainty about her future.  A quick glance at a map causes one to see that Israel is surrounded by nations that are not friendly toward her and some who have even called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

One can only speculate as to what would happen in these nations with the enactment of Sharia law in place. Once the fundamentalist power of Muslim Theocratic rule is in place, history leads us to believe that the citizens who are now calling for democracy would be muzzled with no freedom of speech or press. 

We are seeing that within the hearts and minds of all people is a desire to be free. Governments that control the least are the best. Forcing citizens against their will to submit to government control is never the answer. Replacing one dictatorial form of government with another will never satisfy the longing in the human heart to be free. Some government control is vital to the safety and well being of the citizens, but any nation that curtails freedom of speech, assembly, or the press will soon control every part of the citizen’s life. From where I stand our nation needs to reaffirm the alliance and friendship we have with the nation of Israel during this time of uncertainty in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Ray Newman February 2011 All Rights Reserved