To me, I see a new line of thinking from liberals who now refer to themselves as progressive. They believe that since the Constitution was written by man, it is fallible and prone to mistakes and that in order to do what is really morally correct, we need to kind of ignore it - - sometimes.
In a large part I absolutely agree with some of this thought pattern. In fact I made a very similar argument when I first started this blog. The Constitution cannot infringe upon the basic human rights defined in the Declaration of Independence.(1) Throughout history we have amended the Constitution a number of times because of flaws in its construction, things that were contradictory to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” . Some of these amendments have added to our collective freedoms, like the 13th ,15th and 19th that ended slavery, and remove race or gender from voting restrictions, some like the 18th banning the sale of alcohol drinks actually restricted freedoms. Lucky for me the 18th was later repealed.
I truly believe our progressive friends think they have what is best for the country at heart. Unlike many of the class warfare liberals I do not think the people on the other side of the discussion are bent on destroying the world, they just apparently have a problem reading and understanding history. And what history tells us is if we do not have some limits to government that government will continue to expand its power until personal liberty is all but eliminated. So we cannot just ignore the one devise that restrains the government, we cannot say we will take the dog off his leash and hope we can get him back on later.
It may sound like perfect sense to say “don’t worry about that dusty old Constitution. Let’s just take tax money and give it to these citizens who need it”. But the money is not the governments to give; it belongs to the citizens it was taken from. Taking money from one citizen to just hand to another is not legal. The Constitution does not assign that power to the Federal government.
To use an analogy: your neighbor is hungry, your other neighbor owns a grocery store, you decide to rob the one neighbors grocery store and give the food to the hungry neighbor. It may seem morally right to do that but is it legal? What about the neighbor who owns the grocery store – is it right that you decided who to give his food to? Now, instead of you being the house in the middle – insert “the government” into this scenario. Now you have exactly what is happening in our government right now – and it is called “wealth re-distribution” and it is wrong AND illegal according to OUR Constitution. Whether they are the majority or minority does not matter, our Constitution prevents the majority from discriminating against a minority. Otherwise what would stop a majority of Republicans from saying “let’s take all the property belonging to Democrats and distribute it among ourselves”? If there is no restrictions on the government seizing and distributing it citizen’s wealth, what is to stop them?
It is a slippery slope when we let the government have the power to decide who “needs” our property worse than we do. The huge expansion of federal entitlement programs continues to use up a larger and large percentage of our federal tax dollars. Yet, the only thing we hear from Washington is that it is never enough - - and it will never be enough.
We have taken the dog off the leash - - -
(1) See post “ Federal Laws 8/2/10
And the line of reasoning is that the neighbor that has the grocery store has enough food. They have plenty and do not need it all. Insert the term "evil rich" person or grocery store owner or someone who has more than they need.
ReplyDeleteSince the beginning of time when people began to collect property and more to the point food, people have fought over this very premise. Goods should be shared among all, equally distributed. The problem is that who gets to determine what is equitable? Countries, governments, kings have tried to decide fair and just means to distribute property (wealth). None of the people or bodies of people have the ability to decide what is and is not fair. It does not work. It is a wonderful idea but people are infalible, they lose the limited sight of being able to decide fairness; it is not absolute to all. It varies and differs and can not be judged in any way.
That is why the free market is the only way that removes human emotion, the human sense of fairness. It allows the consumer and the producer to decide through mutual agreement and consent what is fair.