20
Sep
2009
“Need to Look Out for One Another”
In his blitz of interviews this Sunday, President Obama disagreed unequivocally with President Carter’s assertion that racism is the true source of conservative discontent with the administration’s domestic agenda. Mr. Obama acknowledged that the “spirited” health care debate is about more than changing the health care system: it’s about the role – and size – of government. But in making this acknowledgment, the president made another comment that inadvertently indicated why there will be no peace on this issue with folks who are right of the Left. He said the question at the heart of the current debate is: “How do we balance freedom with the need to look after one another.”
But who says there’s a need to look out for one another? The U.S. Constitution contains no such need. But it does say plenty about freedom.
Many on the left would say morality and compassion require that we “look after one another,” but those justifications are completely unrelated to the law and therefore to government. Government must actually choose to legislate on the basis of morality; it is not required to do so. And chosen it has, more than once, to pass laws based on allegedly shared values.
Laws against prostitution and drugs are prime examples of the government legislating morality. Examples of government-legislated compassion are social security and Medicare, into which all taxpayers pay and the benefits of which all taxpayers are supposed to reap. In this way, entitlement programs differ dramatically from all proposed forms of health care reform thus far, as well as government programs that are designed to have individual citizens look after one another, whether they want to or not, using the federal government as the intermediary social worker.
Americans aren’t happy having government choose to contribute their hard-earned dollars to a charity that’s not of their choice, which is what “looking after one another” amounts to. The brilliance of FDR and LBJ in setting up the social security and Medicare funds, respectively, was that they knew getting something back for the dollars put in made it more palatable to the public.
President Obama believes in charity for charity’s sake, without taxpayers getting anything on the other end but the satisfaction of having helped their fellow man. Good for him. That’s an honorable ethos and one easy to agree with in a personal sense - but not a governmental one.
Charity for charity’s sake is, in fact, a valuable thing that people should try to give if they can. But when they can and do, it should be to the charity or persons of their choice, in the manner of their choice and not to the federal government, for the government to decide who’s deserving and why. President Obama, as an individual, is free to give as much to as many people as he can personally afford, purely for the satisfaction of having helped his fellow man; but he shouldn’t be allowed to foist that ethos onto the rest of the population.
Unfortunately, most liberals seem to believe that government should do what individuals aren’t willing to do, while being the very individuals who aren’t willing to do more for their fellow citizens. Various polls and studies repeatedly show that conservatives, the ones arguing for freedom, those citizens who know that the Constitution establishes a small central government, and that the document literally enumerates the freedoms the government is supposed to protect, do a much better job of looking out for one another without order of the feds. They give more time and money to both secular and religious organizations than those who self identify as liberal Democrats, for nothing more than the satisfaction of helping their fellow citizens. No wonder they don’t want the government telling them they have no choice but to give more.
Those who believe taking care of the less fortunate is a moral obligation should be required to live their belief, not simply fill out their tax return. Liberals want to just pass a program to help the less fortunate and tax the public for it. Their way is lazy; it requires no thought, no effort, and no genuine gift of anything. What’s moral about that?
In any political battle in the U.S. between freedom and the need to look out for one another, freedom should win. It should win for constitutional reasons and for moral ones.