When you hear the word poverty, what are your first reactions? Be honest. Most likely, and most unfortunately, you have bought into the Left’s fiery accusations that it is the result of failed government, failed economic systems, and failed societies. But is that the truth? How can one possibly contend that poverty is the result of a societal failure when, in all seriousness, the freedom that allows for both wealth and poverty alike is a precious ideal to which we should all aspire?
Quite honestly, poverty is the one approach to life that we should all embrace, at the very least, for a portion of our lives. Poverty educates us in the value of thrift, discipline, self-reliance, and humility. And, rather than the existence of poverty being the mark of a failed society, it is the society that attempts to eradicate poverty collectively that has truly failed. But, I beg of you to let go of your inhibitions about what I am asserting, for I do not contend that death by starvation due to a lack of the most basic means of sustenance or death by disease due to inability to attain appropriate medical treatment are glorious outcomes of a person living in [an extreme form] of poverty. However, it goes without saying that only a free market where each individual approaches every other individual with some sort of service or good (which can quite easily come in the form of poverty relief), free from government coercion, can remedy this world’s social ills.
Poverty, except for only the most narrow of circumstances, does not necessarily imply the lack of basic necessities. For instance, the poverty line in America in 2005 for a family of four was defined as being an annual income of $19,350, by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Indeed, it appears to be a paltry sum of money, and for the sake of common ground, I will not contest that claim. Yet, that is more than enough money on which to survive; further, were the cultural degradation begun by the New Deal and exacerbated by 1960s nihilistic materialism not commonplace in the present, more people could recognize that reality. And even if it were not enough for attaining the most basic necessities, how is it justified for a government agency to meddle in the financial affairs of its people? Why should the government be given the ability to expropriate my or anyone else’s money for the unearned benefit of another? As President Ronald W. Reagan declared in his First Inaugural Address on 20 January 1981, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
As it applies to the poorest among us and, perhaps more fitting, to the current immigration conundrum, all of us are guilty of “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” in the words of President George W. Bush. From the days of FDR’s New Deal, socialism’s greatest triumph in America, to those of LBJ’s Great Society, and to Clinton’s “I feel your pain” drivel (not to mention Gore’s anti-growth “lockbox”), our government has sold us the fallacious idea that people are incapable of caring for themselves. Why else would America’s welfare state consume more than 58% of the national budget, which amounts to a staggering sum of $1.392 trillion when operating under the national budget of $2.4 trillion for Fiscal Year 2005 (FY05)? If America were to adhere to the time-proven reality that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” thereby eliminating social spending that guarantees no returns, Big Government would not be able to interfere with the lives of its citizens as heavily as it does now. (Note: as loans and other similar government allocations do guarantee returns, they are not grouped under “pink,” if not downright “red,” social spending.)
Why have we let the forces on the Left dictate to the population the proper destination of our hard-earned money? In a nation founded on the bedrock principles of limited government, free enterprise, individual liberty, and personal responsibility, why have we become a consortium of government leeches that subscribe to the preposterous proposition that the bigger, the better?
Government paternalism is anything but moral and American, yet our nation has succumbed to the idea that interference in the lives of its people and that legally-legitimized theft are valid functions of government. To quote V for Vendetta, a favorite movie of yours truly, “How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.” All who consent to the status quo deserve blame.
As young people are so often told, “death and taxes” are the two things we must always view as inevitable. Fair enough. But most would never remain silent or refuse to fight if they were to be murdered, so why should they be fatalistic about taxes? Sure, taxes are necessary to, according to the Preamble of the United States Constitution, “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” but they are entirely dispensable when attempting to restrict runaway spending that usurps our God-given sovereignty.
The most basic ideology that we must overcome to assure that freedom and liberty eternally prevail is that which places government over God and individual. Have we all turned a blind eye to the fact that the Founding Fathers established a national government to guarantee that our God-given, self-evident rights were never abridged by an earthly power? “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” preceded government and the latter was only created to canonize the former. Government does not provide us with our rights; it only acts to secure them. Thus, I would contend that defense spending is the most essential portion of our national budget. Yet, defense spending for FY05 was at a meager 20% of the national budget (approximately $480 billion), while expropriating American citizens’ money for paternalism was at an astronomical 58% of the budget (Ibid.).
How is this at all in accordance with the intentions of the Founding Fathers and, more sharply, the moral principles that have sustained us as a beacon of freedom for 230 years? Said President Grover Cleveland—a Democrat!—in February 1887, upon vetoing a bill that would have aided drought-stricken farmers in Texas, “The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”
The trail of presidents that opposed government charity does not end there. Declared James Madison, considered by many to be the Father of the Constitution, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators” (Ibid.). Along the same lines, Thomas Jefferson, the liberal’s liberal when liberalism still stood for freedom and autonomy, stated, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated” (Ibid.). Hey Al, can you point out for me the enumerated Constitutional provision for a “lockbox?”
Government interference in the affairs of its people, when it has no reasonable interest or cannot solve the ailments as well as privatization, has no justification. This country is slowly becoming “pink” and in time may darken the dye to “red.” What incentive have people to work if government will be their paternalistic safety net, always eager to usurp their sovereignty? What virtuosity is gained by forcing people to hand over their money for “humanitarian” reasons? What wisdom is there in transferring the charitable judgment of private citizens armed with their own money to bureaucrats who dispense other people’s money and are only held accountable every election season? Alas, Friedrich A. Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, was indeed prophetic when he cited Friedrich Hölderlin, “What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.”
Our Founding Fathers created this nation so that American citizens would have access to that far too elusive dream—freedom. Armed with muskets and bayonets, my Scots-Irish ancestors made it clear that they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees. Perhaps you, too, have ancestors that realized life is only worth living if it is accompanied by liberty. And if you do not have ancestors that actively engaged in the Revolutionary War, you must certainly have ancestors who saw the beacon of freedom in America as so radical and so inspiring that they risked it all just to have a chance at what we have come to regard as the American Dream. I know that I do.
In April 1912, Helen Zematis Weishner, among the first of her family to be born in America, had prospects that the bleeding-heart liberals of today would claim are shameful. But, for this daughter of Lithuanian immigrants well below the poverty line, life was full of hope. As for her parents, impoverished Lithuanian farmers, American independence was a welcomed alternative to staring down the barrels of Russian imperial weapons. In America, they carved out a piece of liberty for themselves, and though they were by no means affluent, each member of that family stood on his/her own two feet. Their requests for the government were simple—leave us alone and we will be patriotic, self-sufficient American citizens. And they were. Among the eleven Weishner children, four served their country to eradicate the world of German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese imperialism. My grandmother, who married an honorable, though hardly aristocratic man by the name of George Dickson Burnside, spent much of her working years on a small plot of farmland in western Pennsylvania. They were the poster children for the Protestant work ethic.
The freedom that America safeguarded for her was and still is something that she dearly cherishes. In fact, the only instance of disapproval of American policy that I can remember my grandmother ever uttering was that of the limitations the New Deal imposed on her farm’s ability to grow what and how much it desired. For her, those “progressive” restrictions amounted to little more than the same forces that compelled her parents to flee Czarist Lithuania. Needless to say, she is a Republican who voted for President George W. Bush—twice.
What my family’s story elucidates is that no one and no thing but the government itself is dependent on the power of the government. The citizens of this great nation will fare just fine, even if the do-gooders in Congress and occasionally in the Oval Office (most recently while Slick Willy was in office) restrain from expropriating wealth. To the government, I say: guarantee that we are a people guarded by a powerful military that is constantly exposed to civilian influence (thus, the need for a draft that allows each citizen to do their fair share in the defense of liberty); allow us to defend ourselves with personal arms; allow us to engage in our own activities without unjustified intervention; and, then, everything will fall into place. If our government continues to be bent on national hegemony, it may just be time to fulfill the call so forthrightly asserted in the Declaration of Independence: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….”
With determination and clarity of principle, this nation will once again demonstrate to the world (and ourselves) that, regardless of what the cynics may say, there do exist rational, good people who are capable of establishing peace and justice free from coercion.
