Legislating For Feelings

In the ideals of American tradition, our laws have been meant to protect our God-given personal rights (such as freedom of speech and religion), protect property, and facilitate and protect honest trade. Where our laws erred is when they sought to infringe upon these things, such as with slavery.  Ideally, someone should be free to do with their property and run their business as they choose, as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others.

In order to rectify past injustices, we implemented laws that prevented employers and landlords from discriminating against people on personal characteristics such as “race”.  But this idea has grown into a nefarious, Orwellian situation where we are now in the disturbing position of passing laws and, even worse - suffering court decisions overturning laws – in an attempt to protect feelings, to keep one person from offending another, to affirm choices in personal behavior that bring nothing productive to general society.

How did we let ourselves be ruled like there is a right not to be offended, or a right to public affirmation of personal choices that should not be society’s concern, especially when these things infringe upon clearly recognized rights to freedom of speech and religion?

I often hear that “freedom of religion doesn’t give you the excuse to perpetrate bigotry”. While some marriage neutering advocates would disagree, I don’t promote bigotry, either in law or personal interaction. However, I do believe that if a gay man wanted to open a business and staff it entirely with other gay men, he should be allowed to do so (without tax funding, of course). Protecting property rights does not mean supporting bigotry. Neither is noticing that there is a difference between the sexes and it is that difference that makes marriage marriage, and also behooves us to license marriage as a state.

When people exercise their rights, sometimes they will do things with which we disagree. Sometimes, someone will be offended, or their feelings will be hurt. That is the price of liberty. As long as someone isn’t harming the physical person of another, slandering or libeling them, or destroying or stealing their property or defrauding them, they should be allowed to do what they want with themselves and their property – including offend someone.

As far as bride+groom marriage licensing hurting the feelings of some gay people – that’s something they should learn to live with or get over. Licenses are issued by the people of a state, and are a privilege – not a right. Like all licenses, we issue marriage licenses for a specific reason, for a specific purpose, and that isn't because we think it is a great idea that this particular couple is planning a life together or that we can see they are in love. We don't issue driver's licenses based on how much we think the person will enjoy driving. A gay person can choose to obtain a marriage license the same way a straight person can. That most gay people do not want to enter in to traditional marriage does not morally obligate the state to change the licensing, despite what any court has ruled.

Finally, just because you have the freedom to do something doesn’t mean you have the right to do something. There can’t be a legitimate right to do what is wrong – only a freedom to do so. And if that wrong infringes on the rights of another, then the freedom to do it will either be curtailed or the action met with legal consequences.

Ideally, anyway.

Dear Progressives, Socialists, Liberals, Leftists, and Democrats

We're $19,000,000,000,000 in debt, just officially on paper and just on the federal level. This doesn't count obligations that haven't been added to the balance sheets, state debts, local government debts, etc.

Our government can't keep spending more money than we have, especially not at growing rates of the size of deficits.

"Tax the rich" you say?

All of the wealth could be confiscated from "the rich" and the debt and spending would still be a problem. In fact, it would be even more of a problem because in the following years, "the rich" would be generating less economic growth, less tax revenue, and there would be more people "in need".

The cold, hard fact is that at least one of these things must happen if our nation is going to survive:

1. Government spending has to be cut significantly, and the way government budgets going forward has to change. Slashing spending on the military will not satisfy this need.

2. The federal government has to sell off land and other assets and generate more revenue (through oil drilling, for example) on some of the land it doesn't sell.

3. We need to either birth and raise enough children or import enough immigrants (immigrants are people who come to stay, not people who come here for certain benefits and then return home) who'll end up contributing more tax revenue than they'll take. With immigration, it must be taken into account whether or not these individuals either were a net cost in USA tax revenue (through receiving foreign aid) or generated a net in USA tax revenue (through buying goods and services of American businesses) when they were living in other countries. It will be better, on a global scale, to birth our own new Americans rather than moving producing individuals from other countries to here.

I understand that Leftist policies and philosophies are in conflict with those three times in the following ways:

1. Leftism demands increasing government spending. If not directly, by insisting on more and larger government programs.

2. Leftists would rather the federal government increase its land holdings and would rather NO business use such land, especially because Leftists consider such activity an environmental threat.

3. Leftists are fine with immigration, but encourage immigrants to favor larger government. Leftists are more likely to see children as people who should be de facto wards of the state most of the time, as parasites or abusers of the environment (if only through their parents' actions), as burdens, as hindrances to the empowerment of women, as things to be aborted. All one has to do is look at western Europe, which is thoroughly Leftist, to see that the birth rate does not even replace the population.

If you care about the USA having a future the only logical solution is to adopt one, both, or all three of these conservative or traditional & limited government principles:

1. Making government smaller and more limited government.
2. Selling off government/public assets and/or access to land.
3. Making more babies and raising them to avoid consuming as many tax dollars as they generate and who will also vote for smaller, limited government.

Unless we produce it from scratch ourselves, everything we receive, whether goods or services or money, has been generated by someone else. Either we use voluntary transactions to get these things, or we use force, which means government force or crime, to get these things. Even if you are content to increase confiscation for your personal benefit, we, collectively, simply can't function if there is consistently a higher overall consumption than overall production. There will be less production if producers are punished with more confiscation and decreasing freedom to engage in, and benefit from, voluntary transactions.

Lester Doesn't Understand Money or Economics

Have you seen this making the social networking rounds?

"B. Lester" apparently has no clue about money or economics, or is deliberately playing on the envy of others.

There probably are people out there who literally hoard cash and keep in in their home, or wherever. Some of them are "black market" operators. (Some ignorant people think I'm talking about the slave trade.) However, these aren't the people who end up on the cover of Forbes.

The people who make the cover of Forbes as role models do not hoard cash. If they did, they wouldn't be such successful people. No, these people have built up wealth by helping to provide goods and services that people want. Even if they had stashed all of their money in a bank, they would still be helping others because the bank would be using that money.

Rich people have not impoverished this union. On the contrary, as they build wealth, they help others to build wealth as well. It is up to others, rich, middle-class, or poor, to decide whether or not they want to buy what the wealthy person is selling, or whether or not they want to work for the wealthy person, or invest in the wealthy person's business. That is all voluntary. The poor person's dollar is not taken away against his will. The exception is when a government goes beyond Constitutional mandate and spends taxpayer money on something it isn't supposed to. Even then, since the poor do not pay federal income taxes, the poor person's dollar is not taken away. On the contrary, the "poor" in this union are provided with housing, food, health care, education, military/fire/police protection, recreation, transportation, sanitation and so many other things, largely or entirely paid for by others.

Almost all of the people who circulate this picture would be considered as "hoarding cash" when compared to most of the world, yet they whine and moan about other people doing even better than they have. Being angry at others is a lot easier than working hard, making good choices, and being a success. The problem is, electing legislators who keep forcibly redistributing a wealthy person's earnings or keep borrowing to provide us with goodies is not sustainable. That is impoverishing this union. Free your mind from hate-filled Leftist dung and think, indeed.