TS asked on a comment on another thread: “Please explain how people are being ‘forced’ to give away their private assets to help others.” (in regard to progressives/liberals/Democrats).
This really is libertarianism 101, but deserves its own post.
But here ya go:
When you vote in people who want to increase social spending (welfare, for instance, or foreign aid), those people raise taxes. If someone who did not vote for that person disagrees, he has to pay those taxes anyway. If he doesn’t pay taxes, agents of the government will come to his house and arrest him. If he refuses to come out, they will come in his house and put a gun to his head.
Therefore, the social services you “benevolently” and “compassionately” vote for are paid for with taxes collected at the barrel of a gun. This is an initiation of aggression and a use of force and is NOT compassionate.
Moreover, Democracy is undemocratic, because 51% can tyrannize 49% with things like this.
This joke explains it well:
I recently asked my friends’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, ‘If you were President what would be the first thing you would do? ‘
She replied, ‘I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.’
Her parents beamed with pride.
‘Wow…what a worthy goal.’ I told her, ‘But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house. ‘
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘ Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50? ‘
I said, ‘Welcome to the Republican Party.’
Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.
Another quick explanation is found in one of my lyrics, the Right Arm of Wyoming song “Freaky Liberal Mammal Sex“:
If my neighbor had three cars and I stole one
I’d rightly go to prison
If this “progressive” gub’ment mugs my neighbor for his car
to tax-support crack babies
Liberals think that’s justice
–Michael W. Dean
Ok. But this works both ways. What about the 8 years this country spent under Bush’s rule? The 51%, 49% split was the same but in favor for the republican candidate. I did not vote in Bush. I was apart of the almost half of the country that had was “forced” to agree to the Iraq war. A war that never should have happened and has cost BILLIONS in U.S. taxpaying dollars and the unjustly deaths of US soldiers and the uncounted innocent Iraq lives. Remember, not every Iraqi is a terrorist. And for what? It wasn’t for the “weapons of mass destruction” nor was it for the oil. It was a war against terrorism, which will NEVER end. So, in the meantime, we just have to sit and watch people die and money fly out the window. Well, I, like half of the country, don’t agree with this. Because of this, I feel like maybe I shouldn’t pay my taxes. Why should I if I don’t agree with it? Also, as a gay man, I am not allowed to get married. Well, why should I pay taxes if I have less rights than heterosexuals?
Also, I have always found it interesting that republicans do not have a problem extending cash for war, which always results in death but they are never in favor for extending cash to save or help someone’s life. So, cash for killing is fine but cash for helping is not?
The principle is the same whether it’s a Republican or Democrat holding the gun, TS. Also, in order to distract us from how much the war should have cost, we simply borrowed money from China to pay for the war. If the American public had to sacrifice and scrape by to pay for the war then we would have voted out Bush in ’04.
I don’t think you’ll get much argument from Michael or other libertarian-minded people when it comes to the spending habits of the Bush Administration. However, as I’ve mentioned to you before, the partisanship does bother me as well. I was calling for tea parties when Bush was in office, and few people even gave the idea a second glance. Now there’s a “tea party movement” that has been completely co-opted by nutjobs and ignorant, easily-led Republibots. The message is lost among a sea of political extremism that has little to do with shrinking the size and scope of government.
yeah, whenever I give this argument to a liberal, the answer is invariably “Don’t kid yourself, republicans do the same.”. But they did it less, and as a “brand” or “franchise”, destroy things less fast than progressives, who by their very name want to “progress” away from the Constitution.
As for gay rights, that’s a states’ rights issue, as is abortion, since neither are covered in the Constitution.
I personally have nothing against gay marriage, and as a member of the RLC, endorse candidates who are less “nanny state” than others when it comes to non-fiscal (social) issues.
I’ve heard it said “Republicans wanna burn books, and liberals want to ban guns, no free man can endorse either.” But personally, I’m riding the right-wing pony, and actually trying to SHAPE that pony, which is a more doable task than trying to shape the democrats, they’ve gone over the deep edge of “knowing what’s best”, and they’re destroying the country by killing the economy by raising taxes to pay for everything.
There has to be a country to save, and that’s more likely with the right-wing now than with the left.
As for the cry of “right-wingers spend money on the military”, I truly believe that having a strong military helps keep us safe. I think it should be less interventionist than it is, and a lot of new Republicans agree. (Ron Paul for instance, and most people backed by the RLC.)
MWD
I see it as the complete opposite. I see it as the republicans being the nannies, primarily on social issues. Republicans love to embrace the bible over the constitution. Gays can’t marry. Why? The bible says god doesn’t like that. Books get banned from the library. Why? It’s provoke freedom of thought and god doesn’t like that. Janet Jackson showed her nipple for a mili-second and now every child has been damaged. Why? Because god does not like nudity. You constantly say the liberals want to control what you do and say yet the republicans fight very hard to turn this country into a religious state. In some states, evolution is replace by “intelligent design” (such an oxymoron).
You say that having a strong military helps to keep us safe. I don’t disagree with you there. However, I find it very hypocritical to fight against other countries in the name of freedom when it is very curtailed in our own country by the same people who force others countries to follow us.
In my argument that I discussed in my ideology post, I stated that I didn’t like the anti-gay and social conservative agenda that many Republicans subscribe to. However, I also have to ask myself, is it easier to pull social conservatives to my way of thinking on those issues, at least get them to a live and let live ideal, and embrace the economic aspects of conservatism, or will it be much harder to pull an economic leftist into fiscal conservatism? That’s the dilemma many of us face, being that neither the right or left encompass what we believe in. I don’t like not being able to marry, but do I like staring at a country with $60 some-odd trillion in unfunded federal mandates?
Like TS, I am concerned about the social conservatives who wish to dictate who can marry whom, and what we are allowed to see, to read, to listen to. I realize it’s not as big of an issue as it was in the 80′s and early 90′s- (and TS, I know you know that Tipper Gore is and was a Democrat when she co-founded the PMRC with then-Secretary of State James Baker’s wife, Susan)- but it’s still an issue on some level because we have an FCC who is increasingly looking to regulate content not just on broadcast media, but on subscription media and the internet as well.
Michael and I differ on one key point. While he says that the Republicans “did it less”, I don’t find that idea as comforting as he does. To me, that’s like saying, well, the Democrats tossed you out of a plane without a parachute at 10,000 feet. We tossed you out of the plane without a parachute at 5,000 feet. The end result is still the same, and worse for Republicans, because they stopped practicing what they preached about limited government and responsible stweardship of our tax dollars, at least at the federal level. I’m sorry, Michael, but Republicans have lost the mantle of fiscal restraint, and President Bush was the worst offender. Hypocrites like Sarah Palin wouldn’t be any better, she stuffed her pockets at the taxpayer trough and looted money for her state and only changed her tune when she was picked as a VP candidate. Even Scott Brown isn’t shaping up to be a darling of economic conservatism. Michael, I don’t think the GOP can be molded and shaped the way you would like. It’s purged libertarian elements in exchange for religious fanatics, neo-cons, and corporate welfare-statists. The Democrats never met a tax they didn’t like. There’s no hope for people like us in either party.
Matti F.