FREE TO CHOOSE
A champion of freemen, Milton Friedman died recently at age 94. Dr. Friedman, the Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, had for over sixty years been the defender of the citizen’s freedom from the Nanny State. In 1962 he wrote that, the freeman " regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served." Freemen ask, how can "government ... help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? ..... How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant." It was clear to Dr. Friedman that the State is the servant of freemen; men are not the servants of the State as preached first by Communism, then by Fascism and currently by Democratic Socialism. But there is always the human frailty of wanting ‘something for nothing’ or in Friedman’s words "favors and gifts" which result in the concentration of power in the hands of the "grantor of favors", the State. Inevitably, this leads to the eventual corruption of the master who has unbridled power to distribute favors and gifts and to crush dissidents.
Dr. Friedman realized that no slave society ever produced wealth to be enjoyed by the masses. Witness the shambles when Communist societies collapsed - the people in slavery, industry in ruin and the environment awash in pollution while the masters dwelled in country ‘dachas’ and consumed Western delicacies. On the contrary, freemen create wealth by creativity, ingenuity, industry, manufacture and trade. Freemen have choices in their activities and are only constrained in those choices by recognizing their responsibilities to God, their fellow man, society and the State, in that order. When free societies prosper, even the least industrious prosper. Dr. Friedman’s book "Free to Choose" is the masterwork that explains the mechanics of this reality.
In the same week that Dr. Friedman was irrevocably retired from the war for freedom, we have the spectacle of the rising star of the Democrat Party, Senator Barak Obama , touted as the voice of Democrat ‘moderates’, intoning in a speech at the Kennedy Center the old Statist ideas of class warfare and the Nanny State. He comes across as viewing American citizens as parasites suckling on the State and not freemen who can choose with responsibility and dignity. The Senator stated that in Town Hall meetings he attended, participants always want Mental Health Treatment be a government benefit, want expanded funding for No Child Left Behind and want funding for work projects. He then said that some benighted soul usually enquires about abolishing the Death Tax which the Senator opposes. Sen. Obama said his reply is that there is "no free lunch" in government and if the Death Tax is abolished the government would lose one trillion dollars in taxes. He stated that 90% of the Federal Budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense and payments on the National Debt and cannot be changed. The remaining 10% of the Budget covers the operation of all other government services and functions and totals about one trillion dollars. He then queries the audience - if the Death Tax is paid by .5% of Americans should we abolish it and raise the taxes of 99.5% of Americans to raise the trillion dollars? "What reflects yours values?" Audience member roared,"Keep the Death Tax!" So confident is Sen. Obama that the "values" of the Nanny State have been internalized by the citizens, he expects his audience to roar with approval at the proposition that .5% of Americans should pay for 99.5%. Do you think this is just as the Democratic Centrist, liberal, politician believes? Do we want our flower of freedom to wither? In the days of Imperial Rome the policy was ‘bread and circus’ to appease the masses; now we give out ‘freebies and goodies’ to parasitic citizens at the expense of the dead who conserved their wealth so that they would never be a burden on society.
I use Sen. Obama’s own words and statistics to hoist him on his own petard. But as anyone with common sense knows, his statistics are, as Geo. Allen so delicately put it, "macaca." A one minute Google search shows this ‘rising star of moderation’ number to wildly wrong and, yet, no one in either his audiences or the major media dare shout "macaca." To think Sen. Obama’s Harvard education formed this economic mismash! It appears that he moved from the hothouse of academia to the teat of government without ever having gainful employment. Personally, I think holding a seance to contact Dr. Friedman is needed.
A champion of freemen, Milton Friedman died recently at age 94. Dr. Friedman, the Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, had for over sixty years been the defender of the citizen’s freedom from the Nanny State. In 1962 he wrote that, the freeman " regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshiped and served." Freemen ask, how can "government ... help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? ..... How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant." It was clear to Dr. Friedman that the State is the servant of freemen; men are not the servants of the State as preached first by Communism, then by Fascism and currently by Democratic Socialism. But there is always the human frailty of wanting ‘something for nothing’ or in Friedman’s words "favors and gifts" which result in the concentration of power in the hands of the "grantor of favors", the State. Inevitably, this leads to the eventual corruption of the master who has unbridled power to distribute favors and gifts and to crush dissidents.
Dr. Friedman realized that no slave society ever produced wealth to be enjoyed by the masses. Witness the shambles when Communist societies collapsed - the people in slavery, industry in ruin and the environment awash in pollution while the masters dwelled in country ‘dachas’ and consumed Western delicacies. On the contrary, freemen create wealth by creativity, ingenuity, industry, manufacture and trade. Freemen have choices in their activities and are only constrained in those choices by recognizing their responsibilities to God, their fellow man, society and the State, in that order. When free societies prosper, even the least industrious prosper. Dr. Friedman’s book "Free to Choose" is the masterwork that explains the mechanics of this reality.
In the same week that Dr. Friedman was irrevocably retired from the war for freedom, we have the spectacle of the rising star of the Democrat Party, Senator Barak Obama , touted as the voice of Democrat ‘moderates’, intoning in a speech at the Kennedy Center the old Statist ideas of class warfare and the Nanny State. He comes across as viewing American citizens as parasites suckling on the State and not freemen who can choose with responsibility and dignity. The Senator stated that in Town Hall meetings he attended, participants always want Mental Health Treatment be a government benefit, want expanded funding for No Child Left Behind and want funding for work projects. He then said that some benighted soul usually enquires about abolishing the Death Tax which the Senator opposes. Sen. Obama said his reply is that there is "no free lunch" in government and if the Death Tax is abolished the government would lose one trillion dollars in taxes. He stated that 90% of the Federal Budget is spent on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense and payments on the National Debt and cannot be changed. The remaining 10% of the Budget covers the operation of all other government services and functions and totals about one trillion dollars. He then queries the audience - if the Death Tax is paid by .5% of Americans should we abolish it and raise the taxes of 99.5% of Americans to raise the trillion dollars? "What reflects yours values?" Audience member roared,"Keep the Death Tax!" So confident is Sen. Obama that the "values" of the Nanny State have been internalized by the citizens, he expects his audience to roar with approval at the proposition that .5% of Americans should pay for 99.5%. Do you think this is just as the Democratic Centrist, liberal, politician believes? Do we want our flower of freedom to wither? In the days of Imperial Rome the policy was ‘bread and circus’ to appease the masses; now we give out ‘freebies and goodies’ to parasitic citizens at the expense of the dead who conserved their wealth so that they would never be a burden on society.
I use Sen. Obama’s own words and statistics to hoist him on his own petard. But as anyone with common sense knows, his statistics are, as Geo. Allen so delicately put it, "macaca." A one minute Google search shows this ‘rising star of moderation’ number to wildly wrong and, yet, no one in either his audiences or the major media dare shout "macaca." To think Sen. Obama’s Harvard education formed this economic mismash! It appears that he moved from the hothouse of academia to the teat of government without ever having gainful employment. Personally, I think holding a seance to contact Dr. Friedman is needed.
posted by CAROLYN at 11:20 AM
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