While charity is the essential character that makes a nation that has been built by co-operational sacrifice, worth living in, and should be the impetus to much of our actions, it has never in the history of humanity been enough.
Charity has never built a national infrastructure, never trained a police force, never assembled an army, never saved an endangered species, never cleaned up a river, never maintained the rule of law, and never built a nation. Unfortunately, charity, which has always had a place unfettered and unrestrained by government, corporate power or peer pressure, in a modern nation it never has, never will, and never can cause a health care system built solely upon the principles of market forces alone provide access to its necessary resources in a fair, efficient and equitable manner.
All charity can do is blunt its sharp edges. In fact, charity is the antithesis of the market system. Market forces dictate that no food, water, housing, education, health care or comfort should be given to those who cannot directly pay for them regardless of the reasons for their need.
Comment 1: Loren M. Lambert - “United we stand, divided we fall,” does not mean that everyone, at all times, is going to agree on all things. Otherwise we might as well disintegrate into little Balkanized communities which appears to be the solution to every little community rift in Europe and elsewhere. Look at Catalunya, the Basque region, Czechoslovakia (no longer exists), Yugoslaviaand on and on and on. If you want examples to the other extreme where the solution has been make everybody always and at all times agree on all things, take a look at Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and other dictatorships. In America we seek a balance between competing interests, beliefs, and economic forces.
Yes there is a balance between huge nation states and sufficient geographic and economic divisions that makes sense. I wouldn't want to live in a world where one power had hegemony nor a world where every time one portion of the community had disagreements with another whether due to religion, economics, taxes, or the lack of or existence of natural resources separated off into its own little sovereignty like icebergs calving off of a glacier into the ocean. Such communities soon just melt away as the storms, tempests and calamities of the sea of time beset them.
You ask, “What right does a democratic or representative government have to tax individuals and business entities and use those taxes for programs for that nation?”
Or stated in the pejorative these questions could be formulated as follows:
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to prosecute a war that isn't universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens? (i.e. the Utah war, the Spanish American war, the Civil War, the Mexican American war, the low-level conflict wars in numerous parts of the world, Vietnam, the Iraqi war, and the Afghan war– just to name a few).”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to prosecute laws that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens? (environmental laws, labor laws, safety laws, drug laws, immigration laws, just to name a few).”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to subsidize businesses in programs that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens?”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to build particular roads and bridges that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens?”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to other governments like Israel to prop it up when this isn't universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens? (Yes indeed there are individuals with valid and rational opinions that think that Israel, among other nations that we support as our allies, do not always do the right thing and should stand on their own.)”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to administer programs such as Social Security old-age pensions, Social Security disability programs, food stamp programs, Medicaid and Medicare programs, Obama care that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens?”
These are all legitimate questions and the answer is not that those that are against or those that are for are to be reviled but that when through the political process we deem through our chosen representatives that such endeavors are sufficiently beneficial to our nation as a whole that they are worth funding. Have we always got it right as a nation? Of course not. And the reality is that all of these questions have always had those that disagree with them. The disagreement thereon should not be pointed to as a sign of disunity or a lack of patriotism but as a process through which we become a nation that truly understands and agrees that at the end of the day when the political ruckus is over, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”
Loren M. Lambert © September 23, 2012
Charity has never built a national infrastructure, never trained a police force, never assembled an army, never saved an endangered species, never cleaned up a river, never maintained the rule of law, and never built a nation. Unfortunately, charity, which has always had a place unfettered and unrestrained by government, corporate power or peer pressure, in a modern nation it never has, never will, and never can cause a health care system built solely upon the principles of market forces alone provide access to its necessary resources in a fair, efficient and equitable manner.
All charity can do is blunt its sharp edges. In fact, charity is the antithesis of the market system. Market forces dictate that no food, water, housing, education, health care or comfort should be given to those who cannot directly pay for them regardless of the reasons for their need.
Comment 1: Loren M. Lambert - “United we stand, divided we fall,” does not mean that everyone, at all times, is going to agree on all things. Otherwise we might as well disintegrate into little Balkanized communities which appears to be the solution to every little community rift in Europe and elsewhere. Look at Catalunya, the Basque region, Czechoslovakia (no longer exists), Yugoslaviaand on and on and on. If you want examples to the other extreme where the solution has been make everybody always and at all times agree on all things, take a look at Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and other dictatorships. In America we seek a balance between competing interests, beliefs, and economic forces.
Yes there is a balance between huge nation states and sufficient geographic and economic divisions that makes sense. I wouldn't want to live in a world where one power had hegemony nor a world where every time one portion of the community had disagreements with another whether due to religion, economics, taxes, or the lack of or existence of natural resources separated off into its own little sovereignty like icebergs calving off of a glacier into the ocean. Such communities soon just melt away as the storms, tempests and calamities of the sea of time beset them.
You ask, “What right does a democratic or representative government have to tax individuals and business entities and use those taxes for programs for that nation?”
Or stated in the pejorative these questions could be formulated as follows:
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to prosecute a war that isn't universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens? (i.e. the Utah war, the Spanish American war, the Civil War, the Mexican American war, the low-level conflict wars in numerous parts of the world, Vietnam, the Iraqi war, and the Afghan war– just to name a few).”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to prosecute laws that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens? (environmental laws, labor laws, safety laws, drug laws, immigration laws, just to name a few).”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to subsidize businesses in programs that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens?”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to build particular roads and bridges that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens?”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to other governments like Israel to prop it up when this isn't universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens? (Yes indeed there are individuals with valid and rational opinions that think that Israel, among other nations that we support as our allies, do not always do the right thing and should stand on their own.)”
“What right does a government have to steel money from its citizens and give this money to others to administer programs such as Social Security old-age pensions, Social Security disability programs, food stamp programs, Medicaid and Medicare programs, Obama care that are not universally and unquestionably popular to all of its citizens?”
These are all legitimate questions and the answer is not that those that are against or those that are for are to be reviled but that when through the political process we deem through our chosen representatives that such endeavors are sufficiently beneficial to our nation as a whole that they are worth funding. Have we always got it right as a nation? Of course not. And the reality is that all of these questions have always had those that disagree with them. The disagreement thereon should not be pointed to as a sign of disunity or a lack of patriotism but as a process through which we become a nation that truly understands and agrees that at the end of the day when the political ruckus is over, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”
Loren M. Lambert © September 23, 2012
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