Government Confers No Virtues

MaxedOutMama writes:

Current policy makers seem stuck on the idea that if the government does a thing that is highly destructive when a private entity does it, the activity will somehow become economically functional due to the government interference. That defines "Stuck on Stupid".

My quibble is over calling out only current policy makers. For most of organized history, government has been seen as some sort of divine agency, above the laws of men. Only perhaps during the first century of the United States was government not seen as a special exception to the rules of morality and wisdom. The Founders explicitly overturned the Divine Right of Kings.

Sure, the Failed Obama Administration™ is expanding the assumption of state divinity into new territories in the U.S.A.

But, for example, as Walter E. Williams points out regularly, what is it when one person takes wealth from another person without consent? Theft. If the wealth is given to a needy(-ier) person? Still theft. Or if a majority of neighbors vote to take wealth from others and give it to the needy? Still theft, under a mask of democracy.

The nature of the act, its moral character, does not change. No matter who does it, under what rules or conditions, taking stuff that ain’t yours is stealing.

Another instance oft-repeated by Dr. Williams is the false notion that mandatory service to a nation is something noble. First, the service is to a government, not a nation. Soldiers are ultimately commanded by the President, not Uncle Sam or some other fictional abstract. What is made mandatory has the honor stripped from it. Where there is no choice, there is no virtue.

And taking labor services from someone without fully-negotiated consent and compensation is slavery. We have to artificially narrow the definition of that word to keep from admitting that conscription is in principle no different. How the masters come to own their chattel alters not the nature of the binding. Nor does it matter if compulsory service is aimed toward non-violent pursuits. Those forced to serve are slaves.

Slavery and stealing are two stark and highly-charged examples. But the idea applies across all activities of the state. Anything that would be wrong for you to do to your neighbor, is also wrong for some bureaucrat to do to you.

Only G-d, as the supreme lawgiver, gets an exception. And nobody around here is Him. No matter how inflated their self-opinion may be.