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
Ray Newman February 2011, All Rights Reserved
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