Tag Archives: Liberty

Commentary

George Will explains how Democrats favor increasing dependency on government

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Article here in the Boston Herald. (H/T Dad)

Excerpt:

For congressional Democrats, expanding dependency on government is an end in itself. They began the Obama administration by expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It was created for children of the working poor, but the expansion made millions of middle-class children eligible – some in households earning $125,000. The aim was to swell the number of people who grow up dependent on government health care.

Many Democrats favor – as Barack Obama did in 2003 – a “single-payer” health insurance system, which means universal dependency on government. The “public option” insurance proposal was to be a step toward that. So was the proposed “alternative” of making 55- to 64-year-olds eligible for Medicare. Both of these dependency multipliers will be revived.

The government used TARP funds not for their stipulated purpose of buying banks’ “toxic assets,” but to pull auto companies and other economic entities into the spreading web of dependency. Servile – because dependent – banks were pliable during the farce of Chrysler’s bankruptcy, but secured creditors resisted when settled law was disregarded. Nevertheless, those creditors received less per dollar than did an unsecured creditor, the United Auto Workers, which relishes dependency on government as an alternative to economic realism.

Democrats’ financial “reforms” may aim to reduce financial institutions to dependent appendages of the government. By reducing banks to public utilities, credit, which is the lifeblood of capitalism, could be priced and allocated by government.

Many Democrats, opposing the Supreme Court, advocate new campaign finance “reforms” that will further empower government to regulate the quantity, timing and content of speech about government. Otherwise voters will hear more such speech than government considers good for them. Such paternalism is American progressivism’s oldest tradition.

The Democrats aren’t the party of making the little guy bigger, they’re the part of making the little guy even smaller than he is right now.

Bigger government means smaller individuals

Consider this article about food stamps from the New York Times. (H/T Protein Wisdom via ECM)

Excerpt:

A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they made people register one day and return the next just to get an application. The welfare commissioner said the program caused dependency and the poor were “better off” without it.

Now the city urges the needy to seek aid (in languages from Albanian to Yiddish). Neighborhood groups recruit clients at churches and grocery stores, with materials that all but proclaim a civic duty to apply — to “help New York farmers, grocers, and businesses.” [note who is missing from that list … ed.] There is even a program on Rikers Island to enroll inmates leaving the jail.

“Applying for food stamps is easier than ever,” city posters say.

[…]The drive to enroll the needy can be seen in the case of Monica Bostick-Thomas, 45, a Harlem widow who works part-time as a school crossing guard. Since her husband died three years ago, she has scraped by on an annual income of about $15,000.

But she did not seek help until she got a call from the Food Bank of New York City, one of the city’s outreach partners. Last year, she balked, doubting she qualified. This year, when the group called again, she agreed to apply. A big woman with a broad smile, Ms. Bostick-Thomas swept into the group’s office a few days later, talking up her daughters’ college degrees and bemoaning the cost of oxtail meat.

“I’m not saying I go hungry,” Ms. Bostick-Thomas said. “But I can’t always eat what I want.”

It is not good for people to depend on the government. It turns adults into children. People need to live with the results of their own decisions and not expect to be bailed out by their neighbors. For those of us who are concerned about poverty, we should solve the problem ourselves by private charity. Just taking an interest in your neighbor is a good thing.

Videos

MUST-SEE: Cato Institute lady explains why competition is better than monopoly

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Look at this fun video of a young lady from the libertarian Cato Institute explaining why choice and competition are better for consumers than monopolies! (H/T Hot Air)

She is especially interested in education and has lots of wonderful statistics.

It’s only 5 minutes long! This woman (Izzy Santa) is way better than Dan Mitchell! His videos were horrible compared to this one. I can actually understand what this lady is saying, and she makes fun gestures when she talks. She says “rotten”! The charts are really helpful, too. This is probably the best thing you could ever watch to learn a little bit about why I find economics so interesting. This is really something that all women should know a lot about to help them to be excellent wives and mothers.

You might want to send this post to your friends and family who may think that the best thing for education is to give public schools more money. It may be that the best way to get better public schools for less money is to make them compete with private, parochial and charter schools.

Moral hazard and the recession

Here’s another video on moral hazards, which explains how we got the recession:

This one is only 4 minutes long. I don’t think it’s quite as good as the first one. The lady who is presenting is from the Independent Women’s Forum. I love that think tank! They have Carrie Lukas on staff. She is the author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism”.

Commentary

How would the legalization of same-sex marriage affect your liberty?

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Let me just quickly review how traditional marriage supporters are being treated in the prop 8 trial by Judge Walker. ECM sent me this article from National Review.

Excerpt:

Take, for example, Walker’s resort to procedural shenanigans and outright illegality in support of his fervent desire to broadcast the trial, in utter disregard of (if not affirmatively welcoming) the harassment and abuse that pro-Prop 8 witnesses would reasonably anticipate.

[…]Take the incredibly intrusive discovery, grossly underprotective of First Amendment associational rights, that Walker authorized into the internal communications of the Prop 8 sponsors…

[…]Take Walker’s insane and unworkable inquiry into the subjective motivations of the more than seven million Californians who voted in support of Prop 8.

But the thing I want to focus on is the way that same-sex marriage would reduce the liberties of people who believe in traditional marriage, because this is something that is never discussed.

Consider this article from Jewish scholar Dennis Prager about the effects on your liberties that would occur if same-sex marriage became the law of the land.

Excerpt:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared “heterosexist,” morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is “heterosexism,” a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man’s finger — if they show only women fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians — i.e. those who believe in a divine scripture — will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it — a man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

You can already see it happening in many places. Just this week Dr. J blogged about how Princeton University promotes or sponsors LGBT speakers who advocate for open marriage, but they won”t promote or support a student group that favors abstinence.

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