to both of the above posts i can say nothing more than, "i agree wholeheartedly". all of mankind is loosely related and we
should be willing to lend aid to those in need. the family of man, like any family, will have those who are in need of assistance as well as those who just refuse to help themselves. the analogy is limited, however, in that it excludes the use of force that all governments deem necessary in order to elicit that aid. the involuntary redistribution of wealth negates the concept of choice (freedom) and replaces is with threats of violence and incarceration (slavery).
i hope, miss m, that you can see the difference between what
should be done and what
must be done. by giving government the power to haphazardly redistribute our personal property we essentially give up our right to own anything. even as a whole, the people own nothing. it is the government that controls all goods and services and, with them, the destiny of the people. this might be all fine and dandy if the people were actually in control of government, but we know perfectly well that this just isn't the case.
i'm saying that welfare should be a temporary service employed only in the gravest of cases instead of the cradle to grave control that socialist ideals have been attempting to foist off on us for decades. the freedom to fail is just as important as the freedom to succeed. government bailouts, whether they are to individuals or to organizations, negate the fear of the risks that are necessary in order to succeed. without the fear of loss there is no limit to the amount of risk one is willing to take, since you know you won't be the one having to pay for it all should things go south. with government using the taxpayers' money to pay for every little mistake, there is soon nothing left to pay for the true business of government and they must dig deeper into our pockets just to keep things running.
the welfare state of socialist wet dreams is as impossible to maintain as a perpetual motion machine. though the tax monies of the people may be able to keep the people themselves afloat, the drag of maintaining the bureaucracy necessary to keep the whole thing running dooms it all to come to a crashing halt.
while i never lived under a bridge, i did spend quite some time living out of a van down by the river (in my case it was by the ocean, but you get my drift). though we struggled to make ends meet, we never sought government assistance and managed to survive through our own ingenuity and hard work. we connected with others in a similar situation and, through communal effort, we actually did quite well. maybe that's why i tend to agree more with the concepts of voluntary cooperation than the use of force advocated by the proponents of socialist ideology. i have seen first hand that willing collaboration works and that coercion is self-defeating, leading inevitably to slavery and destruction.
please! even i am not such a self-important blowhard as limbaugh.
the concept of an organization to protect our freedoms is a good one, the problem lies in how it has been managed and the agendas that seem to drive it. the aclu has become a clearinghouse for the petty grievances of every malcontent in the nation. their decidedly leftist bent and their penchant for championing the most ludicrous of causes has led them to become more of a hindrance to securing our freedoms than a force for meaningful change. this isn't to say that they don't occasionally do good work, but that their agenda driven policies tend to be counterproductive to the general welfare and seldom do much good even for the individual.
man they will be thrown for a loop on that one
