Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Socialism For Me, But Not For Thee?

Neal Boortz slams those who believe that a cry of "need" is sufficient justification for looting.

Key grafs:

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...Here's the bottom line. Our construction worker made a conscious decision to have four children. He knew, or he should have know if he had paid any attention at all, that his chosen field of construction work was not going to allow him and his family to live at the poverty level. A college education for his children? Well, you can pretty much forget that unless they excel in sports, or they have a rich grandma somewhere.

Well here's someone who deserves our pity, right? Look at the decisions he's made. Education? Maybe high school. If there was a college degree in the picture he wouldn't be a construction worker. (Well .. he could, I guess, be one of those brainiacs who pursued a degree in English or history.) Then ... after deciding to forego higher education, he gets married and starts downloading children - each with a $200,000 or more price tag - at a pretty fair clip; stopping at four. He's chosen employment in an industry where continued and steady employment is, at best, problematic, ... and he starts having children like a hamster; children that he cannot afford to raise. Then the inevitable happens. The work dries up. He can't feed his family ... and he decides it's time to take advantage of the willingness of the political class to seize property from private citizens and give it to him in return for his support and vote(emphasis added). Then, of course, I'm the bad guy when I point all this out...
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On a similar note, consult Congressman Davy Crockett:

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..."Mr. Speaker – I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks"...
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Theft, for any rationale, is theft.

And thieves generally do not cease being same until they are forced to do so.

Got courage?

3 comments:

  1. This is a perfect illustration of the fact that government continues to grow both itself and the demand for its services.

    Not long ago, accepting any form of welfare brought with it a stigma that kept most from taking it. On the other hand, there was charity.

    Locally controlled charity is best - as the givers are in the best position to ensure that it encourages rather than undermines a sense of self-reliance. A lazy person would be cut off, and their children given to family or friends to raise.

    By taking over the function of local charity, the .gov also removed local oversight, thus removing the ability to "qualify" recipients. Further, the bureaucracy involved often REQUIRED men to abandon their families, thus encouraging and legitimizing bastardy.

    Further, any attempt at self-sufficiency causes loss of benefits, thus DIScouraging what should be ENcouraged!

    Lastly, the excessive taxation required to support both the burgeoning welfare class and the bureaucracy required to run it left people unable to contribute to charity as they once did, and shifting their feeling from "I want to help" to "I pay huge taxes - that's the .gov's job."

    Result? A self-fulfilling spiral of shrinking charity and exploding taxation.

    This is how the .gov takeover went:

    The first generation rejected or tried to avoid it.
    The second accepted it.
    The third DEMANDS it.

    This is all just part of the plan...

    OTOH, Katrina showed us what happens when crisis comes to people without any family history of initiative. They sit in their flooded homes waiting for rescue, and curse their rescuers for not coming sooner.

    On the "bright" side, they'll be the first to die when the inevitable collapse occurs. Sadly, many will die at the hands of those forced to defend themselves from the depradations of these no-longer-figurative "looters." One can only hope that they don't succeed in killing many of the "ants" before they're taken out.

    God help us...

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  2. Yes I have the courage and the means sitting next to me to reform a thief of his ways. The Bible and a 44 mag Ruger redhawk. The thief can take his pick as to which speaks to him.

    Ken Lowder

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  3. A fantastic sermon given by elder Boortz at the Church of the Painful Truth.

    I had not heard that particular story regarding Davy Crockett, so I thank you for that as well.

    And kudos on the Ayn Rand connection. "Atlas Shrugged" was unquestionably prophetic.

    We need more Ragnar Danneskjölds and fewer James Taggarts.

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