A Time For Choosing

Last year the majority of our country voted for a President whose motto was "Yes We Can". In effect, they were voting for the idea that "Yes We Can" turn the United States into a third world Totalitarian country. Although the vote was taken last Fall, you do have one more opportunity to at least voice your outrage by telling your representative in Washington, DC that "No You Won't" sit idly by while a major part of the economy is turned over to government ownership. If you do not express your outrage, you will be the one responsible for this generation's next step down the "Road to Serfdom" just as your parents and grandparents were responsible in the 1930's and the 1960's. No longer will you be able to blame someone else for the predicament that you are placing yourself and future generations into. Below is a question that Ayn Rand answered that explains the logic of voting no on entitlement programs. This Q and A is all you need to know about the 2000 page bill that is working its way for Congress.

Q - That leads me to an economic question. What would happen if we had a system of laissez-faire capitalism, with only one exception: a law providing relief for the poor (an entitlement program)?

Ayn Rand - Exactly what is happening today. The answer does not need to be too theoretical; you can see the consequences in practice. But let me make the point briefly. Allowing this exception amounts to establishing the principle of collectivism and altruism. Such a law would be based on the idea that some men have the right to claim an unearned, involuntary support from others. This is the principle that makes a man's life, liberty and property subject to the will of society. There is no other basis on which one could justify such a law. The process could then not be stopped until the whole of society collapsed into totalitarian collectivism.

We have already seen a small example of this in a foreshortened, accelerated form. The idea of supporting the needy at public expense was started in 1933 by the Roosevelt Administration. At that time the claim of those who advocated it was that we have to help--temporarily and under emergency conditions--just the one-third of our nation that was, according to Mr. Roosevelt, ill-fed, ill-clothed and "underprivileged." This was certainly an improper, altruist-collectivist premise, but people consented to it mainly because they thought that we are a wealthy nation and these are our own citizens. Out of kindness, most people accepted this type of superficial reasoning.

It did not take even a whole generation before we were made responsible for every famine or emergency anywhere on earth. And now we are no longer asked just to help the needy of our own country in an emergency. Instead, we are told to assume permanent responsibility for the welfare of all mankind. We are told that we have no right to our own standard of living until we industrialize, at our expense, every backward nation in the world. If we discover Martians who, instead of being more advanced, are more backward than we are, we would have to support them also. But by that time nothing much would be left of a free society. This is why a principle is an absolute, permitting no exceptions. You cannot, out of charity, sympathy or any other reason, introduce an evil principle into society and impose it on people by governmental force."

The time for choosing is at hand. If you do not express your outrage, the decision will be made by those who will enslave you!