Too often we get caught up in the silver-tongued compassion that political con men use to rationalize separating us from our money.
What is wrong with thinking in this fashion:
If any of us doesn’t deserve to keep everything he has earned, then that man is a slave. Alternatively, he is less than human; he has no moral standing, and no unalienable rights inhere in him. He is like a farm animal.
What a refreshing and honest way to look at what is happening and how brainwashed we have become! J. E. Dyer goes on to say:
The question of what we “deserve” boils down to which came first, the individual human with rights, or the state. America was founded on the principle that the individual human with rights comes first. Any idea that violates that principle is counter to our founding idea. It is not possible to reconcile with our founding principle the idea of collective schemes in which we make some modification to “what we deserve.” We either deserve to keep all our own earnings – money – wealth – goods – or we do not have unalienable rights.
This directness counters the nonsense that we hear from President Obama and much of the rest of the Washington parasites who live off the productive class by buying the votes of the dependent class by promising them more goodies just for living (and presumably for voting the correct way).
Mr. Dyer goes on to say:
The percentage-based income tax and the practice of payroll withholding have combined for a century now to obscure in our minds the simplicity of our founding principles. But the founding principles were very clear. Modern interlocutors can seek to change the argument, toss red herrings around, and get us in full 6-year-old mode talking about “deserving” and “not deserving” according to whether we are Leona Helmsley or Mother Teresa, but the bottom line is that a man whose title to his money is considered – as a first principle – subject to the whim of his neighbor, is a slave.
America was founded on the principle that individual rights precede and constrain the state. As far as government is properly concerned, we all deserve to keep 100% of our money. The question of what we decide to do with it, and how the functions of government figure into that, is a separate and subordinate topic.
I highly endorse his line of thinking and this article. Thank you Mr. Dyer for expressing so eloquently and forcefully what most of us feel.
