IN RESPONSE TO A LIBERAL

To my readers, I apologize for being “MIA” for a couple of weeks. Things here have been well beyond busy. But I have returned to the pages of the internet to grace you with the maniacal thoughts of a rabid conservative, and hope that you will forgive me for my absence and not abandon my blog.

In the mean time . . .

I am the administrator for an e-mail discussion list. We have about 500 members, and we do not overtly discuss politics. So the discussion below ensued off-line between another list member and me.

While it began regarding the rights of pet ownership and the regulation of puppy mills, it evolved into something much greater. And thus, here is my answer to her private e-mail.

For the record, this person was extremely polite, and I believe truly speaking from her heart. While I won’t share her private post to me, I will give my answer publicly. Thus, it has been a very good discussion and one I hope you’ll find interesting.

Enjoy . . .

Dear Ms. Doe, (No, that’s not her real name . . . but you know the drill!)

I always welcome political discussion because I honestly believe that when people put aside their assumptions about our Constitution and its protections and guarantees, they realize that the present day impression of it is flawed at best. Most people haven’t even read the document, and have little to no idea what concepts it actually embodies.

I’m not a constitutional scholar, but I have been reading it along with the Federalist Papers. When placed in a historical context, I believe there are a lot of issues that people misunderstand, as well as some erroneous assumptions made concerning this nation’s foundation.

But for now, let’s start with the bigger philosophical aspect.

For the record, I agree with you completely and I honestly believe that our country – and the world in general – would be a truly wonderful place if we had free health care. Along with that, I believe that people would have happier lives if they didn’t have to worry about hunger, poverty, or housing, and that everyone should be able to work as hard or little as they desire, yet never have to face the ravages of disadvantage.

What’s wrong with reaching for a Utopia? In a sense, I would join you in that search. Nobody can argue that life would be so much easier were we able to just walk out the back door and grab $100 bills off of a personal money tree. Now I know you’re thinking I’m being absurd, and I am to a degree, but humor me for just a moment and let’s fantasize that such a thing were possible. It would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?

The key point is, even if it were possible, would it be beneficial?

Obviously, money doesn’t grow on trees, and I’m fairly sure that in the last paragraph you might have felt a bit disgusted and wondered why I would be so insincere and use such a foolish argument. But I am sincere in this and ask that you stay with me for a moment and see where it leads.

The concept of organically producing cash is absurd because it denies reality. But if you take a much closer look, so do a lot of things being proposed from “progressives” lately. There are certain economic and social laws that, like gravity, cannot be violated. So while it would be wonderful to have that money tree in the back yard, the truth is, if it could be grown and would blossom, suddenly $100 bills would be worthless. Everybody could just walk out and grab a handful, and prices would inflate to the point where goods and services were equal to the speed those bills could sprout. Aside from the natural laws that restrict such blossoms, the economic law is clear. Nothing comes from nothing, and if it were that easy to get money, money would have no value.

This is why there are such strong penalties against counterfeiting. Just increasing the supply of bills devaluates their monetary worth, and is also why our nation’s present financial crisis poses such a mounting danger. But let’s hold that discussion for a bit later on.

For now, let’s continue down the simplistic concept of a money tree. Even with such an amazing plant, you soon run into problems. Some people’s trees would produce more than others, and other people would make choices, such as the size of the containers they used to hold their money and whether to fertilize their trees or not. Some would plant more trees, and others would cut theirs down for fire wood to stay warm during cold spells. Because of the nature of freedom and choice, even if you could retain the value of money, some people would still have more and other people less based on how they nurtured their tree.

Even in this goofy example, you can’t escape the fact that economic equality is just not possible. Even Jesus said, “The poor will be with you always.” People throughout time have been the victims or beneficiaries of their decisions. And that leads me to the next concept you proposed, that of the fairness and justice in law.

Our laws do try to be just. They are not always “fair”, but they are “just”. The reason for this is that the concepts of fairness and justice are similar, but divergent. In “fairness”, if you’re passing out cookies, everybody gets one cookie. But what if one person is diabetic and another is starving? “Justice” says the former should have no cookie, and the latter two. And what if one had to work for their cookie? Is it fair or just for the sluggard to get a cookie while the industrious may only have one? Fairness holds the concept of temporal equality, yet justice relates to a higher form of equality that considers individual circumstance and action.

I agree that it’s not fair that some people are born into economically depressed circumstances while others are born to wealth. But life is not fair. Justice says we offer relatively equal opportunity to both, and if the poor choose the right path, they have the right to become wealthy. And let’s not forget that if the rich don’t attend to their riches, they also have the perfect right to become destitute. But is it fair or just for the poor to trade places with the rich without effort only because of the station to which they were born?

Turning to the Bible, which I’m sure we both would agree is a book regarding moral consequence regardless of its religious aspects, there are two interesting stories pertaining to “rich” men. In the first, a rich young man came to Jesus and asked what he could do to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Jesus told him to sell everything he had and give it away to the poor. The young man went away sad because he was extremely wealthy and simply could not make that sacrifice.

The second man was also quite wealthy, a tax collector named Zacheus. Upon seeing Jesus and without provocation, he spontaneously and voluntarily offered to give a great amount of his riches to the poor, and to return anything he had taken unfairly in a double portion. Christ welcomed him warmly.

What was the difference; was it all about the money each spent on the poor? To keep this from becoming a Bible study, let’s limit ourselves to one very basic principle. One man was rejected and the other welcomed based on their choices. There was no guaranteed outcome, only similar opportunity, and what each man chose determined their fate.

Having worked with the homeless in the past, I found that nearly all were there due to substance abuse. Some had truly fallen on hard times, but once there, they had just given up on life. Others were there because it took less work to live under a bridge than it did to support a more affluent lifestyle. It was just easier to live homeless than to keep up with the “rat race”. But when questioned about their life and circumstances, nearly all of them were in that situation because of their individual string of personal choices.

What was really odd was that most chose to remain in their circumstances. For the few who did come to realize they could live a different way, they were greeted with success, and they progressed from homelessness to self sufficiency. But none escaped without hard work.

Sadly, most of the homeless chose to rely on government assistance and handouts from the church, thus remaining in their pit of poverty.

While the vast majority of those whom the left anoints as disadvantaged continually proclaim that society has let them down, the truth is, our Constitution only promises opportunity. It doesn’t guarantee outcomes. And between being rich or poor, who’s to say which state is better? I have met some very poor people who were profoundly satisfied with the richness of their lives. Conversely, I’ve seen some with extensive wealth languish to the point of suicide. Ultimately, I suppose, there is a form of universal justice in this.

So in a sense, we can have fairness and justice for all people. But it comes in the form of freedom and not from regulation.

We are all at the mercy of our choices. Personally, at fifty years old, I clearly see why I’m not a millionaire. I had the opportunity to enter the field of radio back in 1980. It’s a long story of which I’ll not bore you, but I was a young GI overseas looking for something to do in my free time. So I got involved in helping the military radio station there, and was all set to host an on-air program. But being young, I lost interest and drifted away from it. Here we are decades later, and conservative talk radio is one of the hottest formats in the AM range. Had I stayed with that direction, I might have found the talk show venue and beaten the tide to the punch. But I made the easier choice back then, and here I am now, just an average middle class American.

I had the opportunity, but passed on it, not seeing the ultimate outcome had I been willing to invest the effort.

Now there’s no guarantees that I would or would not have been successful, nor that any venture a person takes will come to fruition. But by choosing the road I did, I guaranteed that I would wind up here where I am today. It certainly wouldn’t be fair or just to take Rush Limbaugh’s or Sean Hannity’s programs away from them to give to me. I had the opportunity to be where they are, and I didn’t choose to take that direction. So here I am, responsible for choosing my fate, ending up as I have, just a lowly blogger.

Everyone has opportunity, and if they make the right choices, along with any requisite personal sacrifice, they too can attain the highest of outcomes. Most aren’t willing to suffer the hard decisions or sacrifice anything of too much personal value. We, as a species, tend to be more like the rich young fool, rather than take upon us the yoke of Zacheus.

So maybe what is fair and just is to ensure that opportunity is prevalent and not try to guarantee the end result. Frankly, you can’t make such guarantees anyway. There are plenty of pathways that lead to success, and the proof of this is in the shrinking middle class. Demographics are shifting, and the numbers of people with incomes between $32,000 per year up to $100,000 annually, are shrinking.

But to where are the middle class moving? Over time, the pool of those making below $32,000 per annum is stagnant. The percentage of people living below the poverty line today is basically the same as there has been in ages past. Instead, the increase is in those making more than $100,000. In other words, not only are the rich getting richer, but so are the middle class. And all of this while the number of lower class remains unchanged.

Thus, there is a shrinking middle class. However, the shift is upward and not downward.

If you consider that there are already educational incentives, small business loans/grants, minority development opportunities, and a plethora of social programs available to all, there’s no reason for people to stay in the lowest strata. And from a minority standpoint, affirmative action has secured a strong advantage for obtaining these opportunities. So why are those in the lower class still there?

It’s not because of “institutional racism” or the rich getting richer. It’s because they have been told they can’t succeed, and frankly, they believe it! Lulled by promises from the left, they have thus become unable to choose a better way.

Now that’s not fair!

The message of many liberal leaders is that the poor aren’t capable of climbing up, and therefore must be cared for. And that care has become the responsibility of the “rich”. You know the drill, “They can afford it.” But when you return to economic and social principles, the well-to-do are already affording it without regard to excessive taxation by providing the opportunities of which the poor either are unaware of, or outright refuse to grasp.

When Bill Gates builds onto his estate, there are jobs for construction workers. When Donald Trump goes to a local restaurant, someone has to cook the food, wait on the table, and wash the dishes when he’s finished. When Oprah airs a TV program, there are dozens of technicians, producers, makeup artists, hair stylists, and other sundry of hired help to make the magic happen.

One of the more interesting aspects of homelessness is that many, when offered legitimate jobs, will either refuse them outright, or will work for a short while and then quit. Work takes more effort than being homelessness, so which is the easier choice?

Bill Cosby summed it up well a few years ago at a speech he gave in Cincinnati. He advised his audience to stop blaming their circumstances on the white man’s oppression, and to start paying attention in school, work to take advantage of every opportunity, and start giving themselves over to a stable home life.

With the help of the willing media, the crowd rode him out of town on a rail!

He was trying to tell them about ultimate justice and fairness, the truth that they were the masters of their destiny, and that they didn’t need the charity of strangers, but only the strength of their own character. That segment of our population didn’t want to hear that. They preferred the message of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others, like Jeremiah Wright, who continually feed them ethnically-based excuses and lead them into abject poverty.

And the situation isn’t just divided along racial lines. At the homeless shelters where I used to volunteer, the ethnic makeup was relatively diverse. Poverty has no color, though the present tide of radicalism would have you believe otherwise.

Because of the “kindness” of socialists, this segment of our population is truly convinced that the system is slighted against them and that they can’t succeed and will always be poor. Since Franklyn Roosevelt, the leadership they have listened too for generations has told them they can’t make it, and they believed the lie instead of embracing what we conservatives understand so well. You are the master of your own destiny, and nobody needs to give you anything when you can reach out and make it happen on your own. It worked for one former welfare recipient, Star Parker, and it can work for anyone who is willing to make the effort and pay their ethereal dues.

And that’s with the present laws and programs already in place. We don’t need further socialization. Opportunity already exists, and has existed for more than 200 years.

(Stay tuned at the same bat time to the same bat channel for tomorrow's episode, the separation of Church and State.)