Posted by
Katherine Harms on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 6:08:23 PM
In Ontario, the government decrees that cigarettes for sale in stores must be kept out of sight of customers. The product is legal, no one will be arrested if the product is sold, but whoever wants it must request it without needing to see it first. Ostensibly, the real target of the rule is children, because the government does not want children to be lured into smoking by seeing the product. Some people point out that the same government which enforces this oppressive rule runs liquor stores where a wide variety of attractive alcohol products are in plain sight, inviting children to observe adult shoppers and be enticed to want the same. Critics also point out that the government has no objection to magazine displays that include pornographic material easily seen by children. One Reuters reporter said that “advocates say the seemingly draconian measure will eventually work, and is too important to get bogged down by morality.”
[1]
Morality is a word seldom spoken with respect in contemporary discourse. It is mentioned with scorn and distaste as something inconvenient and oppressive. The subject of abortion used to be a question of morality, but after abortion was reclassified as a fundamental human right, then we could talk about it endlessly without getting bogged down by morality. That change must surely be documented as a huge forward step for civilization.
Socialist governments seldom permit themselves to be bogged down by mere morality. The socialist government of the Soviet Union regularly arrested people who suffered the mental disease of dissent from the government position and sent them to facilities where they could be re-educated and made well from this disease. The fact that this government did not get bogged down in morality permitted it to avoid any feeling of shame for the fact that many of the “patients” died as a result of the therapy intended to return them to happy, obedient citizenship.
The socialist government of China doesn’t get bogged down by morality, either. Every Chinese family is limited to one legal child, and any other children are illegal. I think it is one of the supremely unfunny comedies of the day. Here is a socialist government telling healthy, productive, loving families that they may have only one legal child, while in our country, the socialists (often hiding behind the name of the Democrat Party) advocate that we permit people who have mental and physical disabilities to have as many children as they would like for the rest of us to support. In fact, our resident socialists are the ones who say that busy professionals should have the right to choose abortion rather than be bogged down with a baby, while people who are unable to support themselves because of mental or physical disability, or even because they don’t want to work, are free to bog down the rest of us with as many babies as they please. Socialists appear to prefer that people who want babies due to the notion that passing puberty is like passing the test to be an adult should have lots of children, while people are equally immature, but already pregnant, should abort healthy ones. Talk about bogged down. I don’t know how the socialists sort out all these policies. To me, they seem like an incredible rat’s nest. I yearn for the light of morality to be shined on this sort of thinking.
This is why I am very disturbed with my choices in this year’s presidential election. Someone told me last week that he could comfortably vote for either candidate, because they are so much alike. I fear that I cannot comfortably voter for either candidate, precisely because they are so much alike.
The cigarette situation in Ontario is a microcosm of socialist government we would all do well to study. The Constitution of the USA includes a Bill of Rights in which it is clearly stated that all powers not specifically ceded to the federal government in the Constitution remain with the states and the people. That concept is implicit in the original document, but many people felt that unless it was spelled out, power-hungry politicians would use the federal government as an excuse to oppress and rob the citizens. They thought that this amendment would mean that the federal government could not act outside the powers granted in the Constitution without another amendment that defined and limited that power.
Those who wisely foresaw the necessity of this amendment would be appalled to see how much power the citizens and the states have now ceded to the federal government without benefit of any Constitutional amendment. I’ll share just one example of this problem.
Every car is now manufactured with seat belts. Every state today has a law requiring that at least the driver must wear a seat belt. This is not a federal law; it is a state law. The federal government has no right to pass laws regulating traffic. Only states can do that. How is it that every state now has such a law?
It all started with the idea that it wasn’t fair for some states to receive less money from the government than others. It just wasn’t fair. Revenue had to be shared. A ground-breaking law was passed that pulled money from every state according to a formula that reflected its ability to pay, and all states received “equal” benefits back. It meant that states which could not afford their share of the costs for a federal highway could have that highway anyhow. All the states would contribute to a big pot of money. States with more money than they “needed” would receive less of it back, and states with less would get more of it so they could have their “fair share” of federal highways and other things. I am starting to hate the word “fair,” because every time I hear it, I know that somebody is figuring out a way to take what I have and give it to someone else.
After revenue-sharing was invented and deployed nationwide, it seemed good to some socialists in Congress to worry about the safety of drivers on the highways. They knew that they didn’t have the right to worry about state highways, city streets and back roads with no identity, but that didn’t stop them. They concluded that if everyone wore seat belts, then highway accident fatalities would be vastly reduced. Many states felt that personal safety was a personal matter, and many states felt that citizens had a right to decide for themselves if they wanted to use seat belts. The socialists in Congress resented this individual freedom to take a risk. They wanted every state to require every car to have seat belts and to require every person to use them. They did not believe that anyone had a right to accept this kind of personal risk. They remembered that every federal highway was paid for by funds in the revenue-sharing program. The federal government was paying for those highways, and they saw a way to enforce the behavior they desired by manipulating those funds which were supposed to be shared in a “fair” manner.
Only a confirmed conservative would believe that the strategy they came up with was unfair. After all, weren’t these seat belt advocates completely devoted to protecting all citizens, even if the citizens didn’t ask them to? The strategy was that Congress passed a bill that prohibited the distribution of highway funds to states without seat belt laws. In other words, they were going to go ahead and take money from all the states, but they were not going to give money back to states without a seat belt law. It is no surprise to anyone that the states lined up, saluted and passed seat belt laws.
This same strategy has been used over and over again. Money which never should have left the states is vacuumed up and dumped in the wastebin of Congress. There, the representatives and senators mull over all the ways they can exert power over states and citizens without any amendment to the Constitution, and without getting bogged down in morality, too, I might add. They exert the power by withholding money until they get what they want.
This strategy would not work if people had rejected the concept of revenue-sharing in the first place. That idea was sold as an act of “fairness.” It’s not fair that some states are rich and some are poor. We hear the same thing in the education arena. It’s not fair that some school districts are rich and some are poor. In the name of “fairness” the states and the citizens have been robbed time and time again. In the name of “fairness” our country is burdened with taxes on taxes, and our citizens are defrauded of their rights to liberty and personal freedom.
The two candidates for president in the election of 2008 are much too alike for me to be able to choose between them on the basis of their positions on the Constitution. They both speak the socialist Robin Hood mantra – steal from the rich to care for the poor. Both of them pose a danger to our country in my opinion. I must choose on some other basis.
Therefore, I will choose to vote for McCain. I want him to change, and I hope that wise leaders in the Republican Party will help him do that. I respect his personal history as a POW. Surviving that experience with a will to continue serving his country tells me a lot about the man. Not his politics, just the man. Since I can’t vote for the candidate who is consistent with my politics, I will vote for the candidate I respect. I'm actually looking for someone who has personal experience in the bog of morality. In that regard, I don’t know what to think of Obama. He hasn’t done anything yet. I can’t even guess if he has any character or personal strength. I do know that he disdains the Constitution.
I will vote for McCain. I hope that enough of us do that to elect him. Then I hope that McCain will see that his constituents want him to preserve and protect the Constitution. I don’t know anything else to hope for.
[1] “Cigarettes Whisked Out of Sight”, Reuters, June 2, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0618447920080609