Sunday, September 20, 2009
The cost of "my rights"
"A privilege is something we receive when someone else pays. The police and firefighters whose deaths we will remember this month on Sept. 11 in part purchased my "right" to walk the streets of New York terror-free." - Mindy Belz
Some might include "the home children live in, the bed they sleep in, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, ad nauseum." Sadly, many have put forth the argument that these "privileges" are "rights."
Many of yesterday's children have grown to become today's young adults who confuse "privileges" with "rights" and in the end determine it is their "right" to shove their hand, or better stated have government shove it's "hand," into the pockets of their friends, family, neighbors and fellow citizens to pay for what they erroneously believe to be "rights."
That's not only wrong; it's pure and simple, selfish, self-centered and self-destructive. No one has the "right" to someone else's property, wealth (great or small) or time unless there is an expectation of remuneration. Few have an understanding of the value of what other's have, that is especially true in children who are always demanding of their parents the latest in clothes, toys, electronics, entertainment, food with little understanding that there is a price to be paid for all and the source of that payment is finite.
Sometimes parents, in an attempt to please their children, quiet them, assuage their need to conform to their peer group or just feel like they are being good parents, will give into their child’s demands. That can lead to an unhealthy expectation on the part of the child that all their expectations are equally important and must be equally met. They may then extend that expectation to their adult expectations of what government and the taxpayer should give them, limiting their own social, moral, and financial personal responsibilities. They think it is their "right" to have what they want with no understanding of the cost.
Other times, a parent may be unable to provide for a child's demands for his "rights," or see those demands as unhealthy, and withhold some of those "privileges." The child may in young adulthood grow to think he was "abused" by his "unfair" parents and in rebellion turn to government as the "sugar daddy" to fill what he may see as "rights" but are really "privileges." Thus he demands from government, becomes a dependent of government, and ultimately becomes a slave to government to which he has ceded his power of freedom, and, perhaps, even life and death.
Much of the demand for "rights" in today's ongoing debate finds its root in the erroneous understanding of "rights" vs. "privilege" and the teaching our children have received in much of their education about the role of government in their lives. They have been taught that government is their source of everything and it is in government that they will find complete fulfillment of their needs.
Sadly, they have not learned that what government gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. There is no "zero sums" formula where there is no cost for added service. They have also not had the historical perspective of seeing that government rarely meets the promises it makes, nor does it create a program, policy, bureaucracy, benefit or entitlement that ends up meeting cost projections. Rather, without fail, legislative cost projections are exceeded by many multiples. What was sold as costing $100 million ends up costing $300 million. What was budgeted for $1 billion ends up costing $3 billion.
In the 1960's when Medicare was being debated in Congress, then President Lyndon Johnson, as a strong advocate of Medicare, counseled legislators that if they were to win the debate, and thus the vote, they had to move the debate off the subject of cost. He told them don't let the costs get projected too far out because it will scare other people:
"A health program yesterday runs $300 million, but the fools had to go to projecting it down the road five or six years, and when you project it the first year, it runs $900 million. Now I don't know whether I would approve $900 million second year or not. I might approve 450 or 500. But the first thing Dick Russell comes running in saying, 'My God, you've got a billion-dollar program for next year on health, therefore I'm against any of it now.' Do you follow me?"
That $300 million program now costs $408,000,000,000 in fiscal year 2009. That's $408 billion, 1,360 times its original projected cost and 14% of the federal budget. Medicare and SCHIP add another $224 billion to the current budget. Those plans have no incentive to hold down costs, in the twisted world of government budgeting, if an agency cuts costs and comes in under budget in one year, they are not rewarded but penalized.
Government also has no incentive to hold costs down, because it has the power of the legislative and judicial system to demand more and more taxation from the citizens it is supposed to protect. Yet, today's young adults, in their focus on perceived "rights" and "entitlements" fail to consider the ultimate cost of their demands for more and more government intervention in their lives.
We as individuals have a right to demand quality health care services from those we pay. We have the ability to go to a different provider when we are not served properly. We have that right because we are paying the bill, either directly or via individual or employer provided insurance plans. We pay for those plans either directly or as part of our compensation package. We have, not perfect control, but control nevertheless, over the direction of our health care.
Health care in the US is about 1/6th of our economy, which is 16% or $2.404 TRILLION dollars. That is 77% of the total US government outlay for FY2009. And some want to turn over control of that portion of our economy, no, our lives, to a faceless government bureaucrat.
Under a plan of "privilege" where my neighbor, friends and family pay for my health care via government controlled plans, whether the so called "public option" or government mandates, I become dependent on and responsible to that other party and the whims of bureaucracy to meet my very personal health care needs. To a people who know of the struggle of running up against a government bureaucracy like the IRS or Social Security or Medicare, where faceless individuals have near unlimited power over your income, your finance, your freedom, your health care and even your life, the thought of more invasion by government into the intimate area of personal health is an fearful affront.
Those who have no understanding or experience in these matters merely see it as a relief from the responsibilities of life. That's a relief they may one day come to regret.
"We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G. K. Chesterson
Labels: children, federal budget deficit, government, health care, Medicare, personal responsibility
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
I just finished watching a DVD I heard about on Steve Brown Etc. several months ago and had put on my list of must see videos. It is Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
If you have never heard of this story, or haven’t yet taken time to view it, you must do so. It is a lesson, first in the strength of character of those who truly believe in their cause and secondly, a treatise on the dangers of a government that believes it alone has the right to determine what ideas are proper and must destroy those whose ideas oppose it.
In a nation where government becomes so powerful that it invades the private economy, nationalizes industry, socializes its education and humanitarian sectors, that power is an elixir to the population and a source of control for those in power. The people become either emasculated through fear or gratitude, or a few rise and speak out against the iron claw of those in power.
Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans and a group of others known as the White Rose chose the latter. When they saw, either with their own eyes or through reports from others, the abuse of a government self-described as Nationalist Socialism, they knew it was their duty to speak out, even in the face of possible death.
That death came at the end of a kangaroo court where the laws and constitution of Germany were suspended for the sake of expediently dispatching those who opposed Hitler’s Third Reich.
The lessons for today are many. Throughout the film, which was created after interviews with many who were witness to the events as well as uncovered court records, Sophie, Hans and Christopher Probst were interrogated and harangued for defying the state in spite of their state provided educations.
How could they rebel against Germany after all Germany had done for them? With the continued intrusion of federalism in the United States into the educational system, the attempts to criminalize home schooling in California, and the control of the public (read “government”) education system by such liberal organizations as the National Education Association which allies itself with the Democrat party, our children may soon be asked the same question.
The education system envisioned by “Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.” It was Kruschev who in 1960 declared before the United Nations General Assembly ”America will fall without a shot being fired. It will fall from within.”
He was referring to the Communization of America, extolling the bullet points of the Communist Manifesto. What we are interested in here specifically is plank five, “Free education for all children in public schools.” An Obama nation would provide “free” education to all children, starting at birth; to indoctrinate them in the glories of a government controlled society.
It’s not surprising that Obama would promote such a scheme in that his college years included a plethora of socialist connections that have continued in one form or another to today. Black Liberation Theology, espoused by Rev. Jeremiah Wright whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama attended for years, is rooted in Marxist philosophy.
But getting back to Sophie Scholl, it is important, even more so as we approach this coming election, that we remind ourselves of the dangers of empowering one who lifts himself up as the answer to all societal needs and will administer those remedies via the power of the state.
When we assign to the state our right of self-determination, we assign to the state our freedom as well. Freedom is not easy; moreover, it is difficult to determine ones course for ones life and family. When government assigns to the people certain entitlements, with each entitlement comes a loss of freedom.
Incrementally since Roosevelt’s New Deal we are assigning our freedom and liberty to an increasingly socialist government. With Social Security, the expansion of government education, the welfare system, Medicare and Medicaid, now with the advent of corporate welfare in the recent bailout of Wall Street and the intrusion of government mandating private industry rewrite legal contracts and looming on the horizon the specter of national healthcare, the American electorate is blindly and ignorantly reducing themselves to wards of the state.
Alexis de Tocqueville, who lived from 1805-1859 stated, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”
Sophie Scholl, as she headed to the guillotine said in part, "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause.”
de Tocqueville’s prediction is now coming true in America. The question is, is there anyone left who is willing to ascribe to Sophie Scholl’s admonition? I pray there is yet a remnant who will rise up stand. If not, it may soon be illegal to publish a dissenting article such as this.
Other sources:
Accuracy in Media - Obama’s Communist Mentor
Accuracy in Media - Obama’s International Socialist Connections
The New York Times - The Mask Slips
The Conservative Voice - Barack Obama Lauded by Marxists
American Thinker - Another Obama Marxist
"We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G. K. Chesterson
Labels: abuse of power, Alexis de Tocqueville, democracy, education, election, Medicaid, Medicare, Nazi Germany, Obama, politics, Social Security, socialism, Sophie Scholl