“They can stoke me with money,” said Senator Ted Kennedy, referring to how the Bush Administration can win his favor. “I’m an easy stoke.”
Why can’t we just stoke him? Or, more importantly: stoke his ideas and policies?
We should challenge people like Kennedy (and his soul mate, Hillary Clinton) to defend their view that one-third (or one-quarter, or one-half) of private wealth belongs to them … merely because they propose to “do good” with it.
Why must the burden of proof be on advocates of liberty and individual rights to show how Kennedy’s programs are wasteful and wrong — instead of Kennedy having to prove by what right he takes wealth from private hands to do alleged “public good?”
Most would not think of Ted Kennedy as exemplifying integrity, or a strong commitment to any kind of moral code. Yet why are his policies the ones most consistent with the moral code so many hold as the ideal — that of government-imposed charity to others? Why are the obviously dishonest and sleazy (e.g. Kennedy, Clinton) so attracted to the notion of self-sacrifice, and coercive redistribution of wealth through government?
These politicians — of which Ted Kennedy happens to represent merely one of the uglier manifestations — are not your friends, protectors, or defenders. They are not even your friends if you happen to benefit from the loot they redistribute in a particular government program. The man who has the power to rob others of their liberty and their property likewise has the power to rob you. In one case, he may be robbing Peter or Paul to pay you in the form of a government program you like. In the next case, you more than likely will be his next victim. As Ayn Rand pointed out in Atlas Shrugged and her other works, the welfare-regulatory state is nothing more than the sacrifice of all to all.
If you benefit from today’s socialistic sacrifices, you will be the victim of tomorrow’s.
