Morality and Liberty
In order for a society to be and remain free the citizens must be sufficiently moral and community-minded. That statement will offend most libertarians but the fact remains liberty presumes a moral people. An immoral people will eventually squander their liberty as a strong government will need to restrain them. A Hobbes-ist state of nature is not conducive to a functioning society.
There are human concerns and needs. There are also human duties that need to be performed. The more that people don’t meet the two above items, the more government will be happy to step in and make a half-hearted half-baked attempt that will more than likely make things worse than better and waste a good deal of money to boot. Traffic laws are a good example of this principle in action. If people paid sufficient attention while they were driving there would be (1) a lot fewer accidents, (2) a lot less laws on things like (don’t talk on your cell, do your makeup, beat your kids, while driving). Traffic tickets have become less of maintaining safety and more of a government profit center. It would not exist if people took due concern while driving. FEMA wouldn’t need to be in the business of paying for funerals (and the associated fraud therein) if neighbors and communities would step up on their own.
The Left, if nothing else, does a good job at reminding us there is people with legitimate needs that are going unmet. It is society’s job to make sure others have a minimum standard of living. The Left’s ultimate downfall is the fact they believe the solution to the problem is more government. Human history proves that this solution will always and everywhere fail. What sets America apart is that when we were founded as a country, the state was not the provider of human needs.
Throughout human history various governmental forms have come and gone where the people had to rely on governments to get basic needs met. Those stories are case studies in failure with a very rare occurrence of an official having real compassion on his charges. People can rail against the disparity between the rich and the poor in capitalistic societies, however, history has shown that disparity has always existed regardless of the governmental form. The difference in America is that owning your own home is not out of reach for most people, and even though the government can take your home and give it to someone else with more money (thank you Kelo), they still have to pay you for it.
While the Left points out these problems and tries to solve them with solutions that will never work, to often on the Right people don’t think of them at all. If those on the Right wish to maintain limited government and ample liberty, they need to step up and help in their own communities and provide for some of these needs. There are legitimate functions of government that should remain with government (national defense, law enforcement, interstate commerce) but for those things that the people can do, they have a duty to do. As long as their exists problems that people are too selfish, lazy, or careless to do anything about, there will always be ready and willing bureaucrats who are willing to increase their power and cash flow who will step in and waste money. It’s up to those wanting to defend liberty to prevent them.
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You’ll have to convince me that the same people complaining about having to pay the government to support the poor are going to do so on their own if not required. Or are you one of the people who thinks the poor just need to be told to “get a job?”
I’d love to see a comparison between the efficiency of government and of churches (where most donations go), and how much of this money actually goes to help the most needy in this country and not into e.g., improving facilities, administrative salary, mission trips, fighting sex scandals, etc.
The biggest problem is that most charities (i.e. helping out your own community as you say) are very localized. This means “rich” communities have well-funded charities and “poor” communities have underfunded charities. And when disasters strike (like a hurricane) the local charities aren’t going to be able to deal with the scope of the disaster, especially when the charity itself (administrators and facilities) is being affected by it.
RESPONSE:
I hold that part of the reason many people “don’t care” is because it’s the government’s job. If they’re taking a third off the top, they should be feeding people. Having worked with many charities, most of whom have 80-90% of donation money going directly to the work they are doing, is that the government can’t even touch that level of efficiency.
Comment by ... | August 16, 2005
John,
U remember me from Newman? Nick here. I must say that your blog is very entertaining and very good representation of the conservative viewpoint, but unfortunately I disagree with you here. I disagree with the statement that the US was founded without the state being the provider of human needs. In many cases the state must be a provider of human needs and must work to alleviate the poverty and support economic growth. This country has been most successful when the government has intervened heavily in providing human needs, most of which are economic in nature. The state funded and subsidized the education and housing of GIs after WWII causing the greatest boom and economic expansion in our history from 1945-1972, and at the turn of the century the rights of laborers to perform their labor under proper working conditions could not have taken place without the government actively taking a role in establishing limits on working hours, minimum wages, and establishing the legal rights of workers to organize under unions. Also, racial and ethnic minorities would never have gained any civil rights to participate in society and advance economically without the government stepping in and protecting their basic human rights as people and Americans. I think the idea that people should be left on their own and that people always succeed when the state gets out of the way and allows the economy and society to just work on its own creates an overly simplistic picture of the dynamics by which the American government and the people they rule interact with each other.
Comment by Nick | August 23, 2005