Is It Too Late?, Part IX – The Only Hope

In Part VIII of this series, I introduced what I believe to be the only hope to turn America around and prevent it from becoming another Marxist nation-state — the Liberty Education Solution. The essence of such a revolution would be to teach people that only voluntary compassion is moral. Compulsory compassion is coercion, and coercion is always immoral.

Liberals insist that anyone who is against government handouts lacks compassion. But the fact is that one thing has nothing to do with the other. The most compassionate people I know are strictly opposed to the use of force (including the use of force for the purported purpose of helping the “truly needy”).

While the needs and desires of certain individuals may be a legitimate concern for many people, they nonetheless fall outside the scope of man’s natural rights. This does not mean that a person should not be concerned about others. It does not mean that a person should not be sympathetic toward others. It does not mean that a person should not be helpful to others. It does not mean that a person should not be charitable toward others.

What it does mean is that no person has a right to force others to be concerned, sympathetic, helpful, or charitable toward others. As Frederic Bastiat put it, “The purpose of the law is not to be philanthropic; it is to protect people’s property.” How dare some arrogant politician tell us that he wants to spread our wealth around? Why doesn’t he just spread his wealth around?

Decades of socialist brainwashing have made the task ahead of us enormous. And the first step in that task is to understand that the only hope for a solution to the economic disaster Americans are now facing is to start asking the right questions. Because of the success of the socialists’ moral revolution, virtually everyone now bases his arguments on false premises that are now considered sacrosanct.

To turn things around, people must be taught to let go of those false premises. That is the only way they can be intellectually free to ask the right questions.

For example:

• They would have to be taught to ask not “Is majority rule best for the greatest number of people?” but “Is majority rule, as it is now practiced, moral?”
• They would have to be taught to ask not “Does the present tax structure really help the people it is intended to help?” but “Is the present tax structure moral?”
• They would have to be taught to ask not “Is enough effort being put forth to cut waste from federal programs?” but “Why must there be federal programs at all?”
• They would have to be taught to ask not “What should the government do to solve people’s problems?” but “Why should the government be involved in solving people’s problems in the first place?”

If mass education on the subject of morality is to succeed, high-profile libertarians and conservatives must have the courage to tell Americans publicly: “You, my friends, are entitled to nothing. You are not entitled to a car; you are not entitled to a job; you are not entitled to medical care; you are not entitled to a roof over your head; you are not even entitled to three meals a day. What you are entitled to is exactly what you can earn in a free market — or what others are voluntarily willing to give you.”

I say this not because I’m a cold-hearted person, but because I believe in the sovereignty of the individual. Individual sovereignty and compassion are not mutually exclusive objectives. Socialists have quite cleverly and successfully tied the two together, but they are, in fact, unrelated. I believe in individual sovereignty, but I also consider myself to be a compassionate person. Change that: I know I’m a compassionate person. That’s why I believe so strongly in private charity.

It won’t be easy for freedom advocates to be brutally frank about this issue, because the sad reality is that the vast majority of people want more benefits, not less. Worse, they have absolutely no understanding of the moral ramifications of their actions — and only now are starting to see the economic consequences of the socialist polices of the past sixty years. At the same time, their minds are being scrambled by a new wave of younger, slicker socialists who are masters at appealing to the GAVEC in people to convince them that greedy corporations, greedy Wall Streeters, and greedy rich folks are the culprits.

“But,” you may ask, “what’s the use of becoming involved in a mass education program when you’ve already assured me that financial catastrophe for the U.S. is virtually impossible to avoid?” It’s true that it’s a virtual certainty that America’s fiscal suicide will have to be carried to its final conclusion before people will even consider listening to “radical” solutions.

What is not certain, however, is which radical solutions they will listen to. This will be the deciding factor when it comes to America’s future, because one set of solutions will lead to slavery, the other to a police state. The only hope?

More on that in Part X of this series.