No, I Don't Like Democratic Socialism

Leftists either have no imagination or they are hoping you don't have any. They constantly set up and knock down straw-men arguments and talk about matters as if a large, intrusive central government is not only capable of solving most problems in life, but the only way to do it.


You may have seen this graphic depicting Tired Leftist Imagery which is making the rounds because Senator Bernie Sanders, candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States, is openly a Democratic Socialist. Some say Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic Socialist as well, but lies about it. I think she's more of a Hillaryist than anything. But I digress.



I saw a good response on Facebook to this image posted a Clint Johnson who wrote:

The problem with statists is they believe that because we are against the state forcing people at gunpoint to pay for the ruling class undertaking grossly inefficient actions that are first and foremost geared to enrich cronies and buy votes for power mad sociopaths... we are somehow against the goals that the propagandists use to rationalize their self serving power grabs.

It is like saying that if I am against slave trafficking for the sex trade, I must be against sex and wish to give up anyone ever having children.

Brilliant.

I like to note that there are three branches of the federal government, as well as state and local government. In addition, there are charities and other voluntary associations. It is entirely possible for someone to want a program to address a problem or handle ongoing tasks, but not want a federal government agency to handle it. By the way, we have a governing document in this union  called the Constitution of the United States of America.  It spells all of this out (the three branches, their enumerated powers, what is left to others like the state or the people).

Let's take each specific thing in the graphic one by one.

Imaginary Rights

[This entry is a little dated now, but the principles behind it endure because the truth doesn't change.]

Leftists love to say something they want is a "right". They think merely stating that something is a right should end debate.

In recent years, we've heard a lot from Leftists and those they've bamboozled that homosexual couples have a "right to marry" and that "marriage equality" is a "right".

Discussions about these matters need to be clear about what is being addressed: Are we talking about the freedom to have a ceremony and share lives? Or are we talking about getting a state-issued "marriage" license?

I personally know homosexual couples who "married" years before any country or state starting calling such pairings "marriage". Were my homosexual friends lying about getting married? That seems to be the implication of marriage neutering advocates, including those in the MSM, who refer to laws including the bride+groom requirement as "bans on gay marriage". However, what neuterists are referring to is not a basic freedom of association, but getting a state-issued license, often in violation of the freedom of association and the right to vote. There is a right for two (or more) people of whatever sex to personally associate with each other as they wish. There is not a right to force the rest of us to license such relationships and call it marriage.

Where do marriage neutering advocates get this notion that state-licensed marriage ia a right? They usually cite Loving v. Virginia, but while that is an effective emotional manipulation, logically the connection doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

The right to marry is not enumerated in the Constitution, but the Constitution exists to tell government what it CAN do, and not to list all of our rights. Oh, but look. Our founding documents and the discussion surrounding their adoption indicate that we have property rights, free enterprise rights, freedom of religion, the right to associate – or not – with whomever we want.  Those seem to me to be in conflict with the "right" to force other people who have voted to keep marriage licensing to instead neuter those licenses so that they are no longer marriage licenses but "any two people of age, not closely related and neither of whom is currently married to other" licenses. The people who wrote and adopted the Constitution and all of the Amendments did so with no thought whatsoever that a brideless or groomless pairing must be licensed by states. Also, it appears that individuals and their private businesses should not be forced to participate in ceremonies they do not support.

It brings me once again to the larger question of rights. What are rights and where do they come from?  Not all freedoms and entitlements are rights. Quite often, laws that some people think give them rights are actually infringing on the rights of others. A "right" to own a slave in America violated the rights of the person enslaved against their will. Our founders maintained that rights come from God (or Nature, for those of you who get queasy at the thought of God), not the government. The government exists to protect our existing rights, and should be limited to as not to infringe on our rights. That was the thinking.  It was the kind of thinking that looked as rights as something that never obligate others without their consent or without a crime being committed.  But these days, it seems like things become "rights" simply because someone wants them to be.

We have the right to free speech because we were born with the ability to communicate. We only have the right to marry in so far as we can find someone willing to be our spouse and something willing to perform the wedding.