In Theft In Name Of Stimulus Is Still Theft, economist Walter E. Williams makes a powerful argument for something that those who love liberty know: self-ownership is the foundation.
“If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one’s private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.”
Why aren’t some people able to accept this?
The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda.
A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind’s most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another?
A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft.
That’s it right there. It’s really very simple.
I recently experienced how even some religious leaders don’t understand this when I wrote about Kansas Interfaith Power and Light. This organization has a plan, outlined in a Wichita Eagle op-ed written by Moti Rieber and Connie Pace-Adair, to provide programmable thermostats and weatherization rebates to people. How will these things be paid for?
The op-ed doesn’t say so, but how can government give something to one person if it does not take something away from another?
For making this argument, I was told by Rieber that my “philosophy is bankrupt, literally and figuratively.”
(On Williams’ page at George Mason University, the article is titled Our Problem Is Immorality.)
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