The Founding Fathers established our Republic with the clear intent of protecting the freedom bestowed upon us from government control at all cost. The tyranny of British rule was so much in the forefront of their minds when they penned the Constitution, that to them, protecting liberty was an imperative. Seems many of our elected officials over the past century have forgotten.
For many years, entertaining any idea of sacrificing individual freedom at the cost of liberty would not even been open for consideration. The past century, however, has seen a gradual shift in the role of government in our lives and little by little more of our personal freedoms have been snatched from us under the guise of providing for the common good. The role of government has been twisted and perverted such that many no longer realize when the government snatches a little more.
As I said, nearly all of the attacks on our personal freedom have been made under the banner of providing for the common good. This coercion resulting in individuals voluntarily giving up a portion of their personal freedom is made possible by appealing to two of America’s greatest virtues, charity and sacrifice. America is the most charitable society in history. Ayn Rand stated in her book The Virtue of Selfishness:
"Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to help others; society -- as an organized political system -- has no rights in the matter at all."As a general rule -- as long as liberty is maintained -- these virtues are not subject to coercion because charity and sacrifice in a free society are personal and private undertakings. When the government takes our liberty in the form of taxes and subsidizes public programs in the form of charity, the individual choice is gone and so is liberty. When politicians position themselves as the stewards of charity the values of each individual are disregarded because the values of one group always win out over the values of other.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights specifically forbid the government from being purveyors of charity to protect its citizens from tyranny and yet the political elite in this country have tossed these documents aside because they say their actions are for the good of society. In essence they believe that they can better decide who is in need than can the individual citizens they represent.
Many arguments for government charity revolve around the poor and those that can’t provide certain necessities for themselves. The answer in a free society is that you will not be stopped from helping them. To protect individuals from liberty grabbing politicians, Rand offers the following advice:
The next time you encounter one of those "public-spirited" dreamers who tells you rancorously that "some very desirable goals cannot be achieved without everybody's participation," tell him that if he cannot obtain everybody's voluntary participation, his goals had better remain unachieved -- and that men's lives are not his to dispose of.Once liberty is voluntarily relinquished it opens the door to tyranny. Servitude will be the price if we do not stand up and defend our liberty.
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