It wasn't the answer that kept me up, that is an emphatic "NO!" But, rather what kept me from a good night's sleep was the pervasiveness of this seemingly innocuous argument.
I mean, it sounds fabulous at cocktail parties, right?
"Ah, dahling, the state should be responsible for the well being of its citizens. Pass me the caviar..."
It reminds me a lot of "let them eat cake." Of course, the upper class, which pays a small percentage of their income to the state, feels no negative effects from the state. They pass laws that don't pertain to them, pay taxes out of their abundance to keep the government going and don't really care much about the cost of food, gas, heating bills, clothes or anything.
Like Nancy Pelosi.
However, the poor have to pay a much larger percentage, or even everything that they have to the state and are then slaves to the state. They get only the amount of what is left that is rationed to them by the government. Instead of being free to work hard, take what they earn and spend it on anything they want, the government takes it and gives it to other people.
So, while things are going well at the cocktail party, a wild-eyed redneck with a shotgun yelling, "Stay off my land!" doesn't go over nearly as well. But that freedom fighter is exactly who built this country. This republic was settled and built by people who wanted to be free from government tyranny.
It is hard to figure out how this country full of immigrants who came here to work hard and live free FROM the state has succumbed to the argument that the state can and should take care of them.
Last Thanksgiving I helped one of my cousins with his college economics homework. (We got an A.) He was being taught to factor in the economic costs and benefits of government in all of his calculations. I couldn't believe it!
In economics, I was taught the free market. (I got an A.) Government isn't the solution, it is the problem. Government doesn't make, it just takes and re-distributes. The elite class gives a little and doesn't notice. The low class, which is all that is left, there is no middle, has nothing, it all belongs to the state.
Sadly, the socialist model, which is exactly what I am describing, has been tried throughout the world for centuries and it always collapses when the government runs out of other people's money and goes bankrupt.
(Yes, foreign readers, America is headed in that direction, which is why I am so upset.)
Here are just a few of the examples where socialism/communism/liberal progressivism/call it what you want has been tried and failed.
In the Bible, the new church tried out socialism. Everyone took what they had and gave it to the church and everyone had enough. Until, Ananias and Sapphira came along. They sold some land and gave part of the money to the church. They kept some for themselves, which is fine. But, they lied and said that they had given everything. They were both struck down dead. (Look it up, it is in Acts.)
The Pilgrims tried communism. Did you know that? In the new world, the land belonged to everyone. Everyone worked and everyone shared the harvest. It didn't take long for a Pilgrim to figure out that if he stayed in the dirt-floor cabin, propped those buckle-y shoes on a milk urn and watched the sheep stroll by on the big screen picture window, he would get the same amount of food.
So, people stopped showing up at work! Yeah!
Then, they divided up the land. When the land was privately owned and you ate what you grew, guess what happened? They worked their buckle-y shoes off to grow food.
Remember the USSR? The government took everything and then distributed to everyone the portion that the government decided each person deserved. People were starving. Even now, socialist countries all over Europe are scratching their heads as they watch their governments go bankrupt.
Socialism sounds great! But, it doesn't work anywhere. We all used to agree on this. It used to be something that we all fought against. Remember the book by Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time?
(My daughter wanted me to point this out and please watch the comments, she can, like, read you know.)
In it, the greatest evil was a place where they lulled you to sleep, made you stop thinking and made you act like everyone else. If you didn't, you were taken away and "re-programmed." We are introduced to the world in the book by a description of a street where all of the houses are exactly the same. All of the children bounce the balls in exactly the same way. They all come inside exactly when they are told and the one boy who doesn't bounce properly is taken away.
Frighteningly, that doesn't sound too dissimilar from where we are headed right now. We all are being forced to comply with a very narrow liberal worldview. We are being programmed to stop thinking that government is the problem. We are being told that government is the solution.
After Obamacare, the IRS, the NSA, Ebola and ISIS, do you really believe that?
We are being told that "you didn't build that" business. We are being turned toward class and race warfare. Hillary Clinton just said that businesses aren't job creators.
Once we all stop thinking and working hard, then we all turn to the government to fill all of our needs and willingly let the government take over - where exactly will we be?
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