Sunday, June 15, 2008

How big government takes, rather than gives

I recently signed up as an online activist for the Bobb Barr campaign and came across the following question on his Facebook page. What will this country become if we continue to be led by big government politicians? Now that I have had time to think on it and do a little research, I have come to a more informed conclusion in much the same vein as the reply I posted there. The following is my response:
I am voting for Bobb Barr in this election because I think he will do more to make our country and each individual within it more free than it is now. He is running on a platform of smaller government and lower taxes, the two most important issues directly affecting our lives in this country. I believe that if we continue on the path of big government handouts and regulation that we are paving for ourselves, this country will become less free and more like the countries that envy us so much for our success.
We have politicians in this country fighting to make us more like our Canadian and European counterparts, where people can't get healthcare or languish on waiting lists because of the inefficeincies of government. We have people running for office on a campaign platform that promises change with no real definition, because the change being promised always leads to the problems our friends in the third world struggle to overcome. High unemployment, food shortages, and a lower standard of living for all is the historic result of policies meant to redistribute wealth and micromanage people's actions in the name of fairness. We have people who call themselves Conservatives talking about obscene profit, refusing to address our dependence on foreign oil, and buying into global warming hysteria. Big government has the same results regardless of the point of view, or execution of ideals.
These politicians talk about fairness and equality, but their true goal is power. Even if they genuinely care about the people, they are more concerned with enacting their ideals, at any cost, than they are with truly helping the people. The result is never to bring the poor up, but to bring the rich down. The result is that we all loose something.
The best thing the government can do for the people is to do the job it was set up to do and leave the rest to the people, for better or worse. Personal freedom and free markets allow people who work hard to achieve anything. It may be callous, but people who don't care to help themselves, don't have any right to the profits of someone else's hard work. Personal freedom will allow people to achieve what no government can give them. If you think we have problems with healthcare and the economy now, wait until we start to see the results of change for its own sake.They say there's no such thing as a free lunch. If you wait around for the government to feed you on someone else's dime, you deserve the slop you will get.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I read over the Bob Barr site and what he proposes may be a return to a very fundamental interpretation of the Constitution but I'm not convinced it's practical. I reject that free market capitalism is a self regulating entity on a macro scale. Also, as corporations grow large enough to have global influence, it seems some type of government oversight will be required unless we want foreign policy to be the purview of CEOs. With that said, government involvement in a free market is a delicate thing to say the least so be aware I don't see it as a cure-all. My primary point is that it is unrealistic to believe that entities as large as corporations and governments can exist independently of each other.

machinepolitick said...

We all have to work for what we think is best. Clearly the current system is flawed. At the end of the day, I don't want anyone telling me what to do if I don't harm anyone else. That doesn't seem so much to ask. I'm not an anarchist, just skeptical of the need for someone else to have so much power over my life.