Some years ago, I was asked to speak to a Christian
homeschooling conference — my wife and I have homeschooled our six
children — and during the question-and-answer session after the
speech, I faced a question for which I was unprepared.
“How has your Christian faith influenced your political
beliefs?”
This stunned me into silence for a second. Then I answered:
“Well, I guess it comes down to that part about ‘Thou shalt not
steal.’”
From there I proceeded to discuss the basic immorality of the
welfare state, how it is wrong for government to take money that
one man has worked for and give it to someone who hasn’t earned
it.
Whereas transactions in a market economy are voluntary and
peaceful, the actions of government are essentially coercive,
backed with the threat of violence to those who disobey. What
government does, it does “at the point of the bayonet,” so to
speak. Therefore, the fearsome power of government ought to be
constrained to limited and specific purposes — defending the life,
liberty and property of citizens.
When government begins to meddle in the economy, picking winners
and losers, using appropriations and fiscal policy to transfer
money from one group of citizens to another, it divides society
into two classes, taxpayers and tax consumers, punishing the former
in order to reward the latter.
Such a policy is not merely misguided, it is immoral — indeed,
it is sinful, as I told the Christian homeschoolers — and
by displaying the spectacle of government engaging daily in
legalized theft, the welfare state tends to corrupt the morals of
its citizens.
THAT LONG-AGO SPEECH came to mind yesterday as the Senate prepared
to vote on the mortgage bailout plan. Why, after all, are so many
Americans so fiercely opposed to this plan, even though bailout
proponents warn that the alternative is a complete meltdown of the
economy?
The president has told us that “the government’s top
economic experts” believe the bailout is necessary to avert an
economic collapse. The plan is supported by leaders of both parties
in Congress, and endorsed by both John McCain and Barack Obama. One
eminent pundit has denounced bailout opponents as
“nihilists.”
Yet I cannot escape the conclusion that the bailout is wrong.
Not just wrong as a matter of politics or policy, but wrong as a
matter of morality. And I suspect that the same moral instinct
fuels the fervor of many citizens who have been burning up the
Capitol Hill switchboard with calls demanding that lawmakers vote
against this bill.
Ordinary Americans cannot ignore the “still small voice” telling
them that what is being proposed is nothing less than
government-sponsored grand theft, and that in a government “of the
people, by the people, for the people,” this crime is to be carried
out in their name.
The fact that similarly massive expropriations — from farm
subsidies to Medicare Part D — have been official federal policy
for decades does not deter these opponents of the welfare state
from rising up to shout “no!” when, as on this occasion, the
proposition of a new swindle puts the fundamental issue into stark
relief.
SOME SUPPORTERS of the bailout have said that it is “irresponsible”
to oppose the plan, since failure to pass it would lead to a
financial panic, a deep recession and economic hardship for
millions. Supporters insinuate that opponents are ignorant of these
potential consequences, having been whipped into a know-nothing
frenzy by demagogues. If ordinary Americans were properly informed,
say the bailout proponents, they would support the plan.
Those who suppose that ignorance motivates widespread resistance
to the bailout may be underestimating the common sense of common
people. Isn’t it possible that grassroots opposition is both fully
informed and completely sincere? Has it never occurred to bailout
proponents that many of their fellow citizens would perhaps prefer
an honest recession to a false prosperity?
Although much opposition seems to be driven by class-warfare
resentment of a “bailout for billionaires,” at least this brings
into focus the underlying redistributionist principle. If it is
right to give “disability” payments to winos and Social Security
checks to affluent retirees, why is it wrong to give $700 billion
to Wall Street financiers in their moment of need? Perhaps someone
should put that question to left-wing bailout opponents like
Michael Moore and Dennis Kucinich.
Most of all, the bailout debate ought to remind Americans
exactly who foots the bill for the “compassionate” gestures of
liberal politicians. During Friday’s debate, Obama defended his tax
proposals and health-care plans by saying, “I think those are pretty important
priorities. And I pay for every dime of it.”
You pay for it, senator? Don’t you mean we pay
for it?
Of course, the Illinois Democrat was not offering his own
substantial wealth to pay for his proposals — even Obama’s
lucrative book royalties would be just a drop in
the bucket to defray the cost of his multi-billion dollar plans for
Change.
Rather, Obama was speaking the language of those who’ve spent
decades endeavoring to delude Americans into thinking that federal
giveaway programs are funded by the generosity of politicians,
rather than by expropriations from the pockets of taxpayers. Why
worry what “affordable health care” will cost, if Obama is offering
to pick up the tab?
The something-for-nothing promise of “free” benefits is the
corrupting Big Lie of the welfare state. As I told those Christian
homeschoolers years ago, this false promise is a temptation to
sin.
EVER SINCE that unexpected question prompted my epiphany about the
fundamental immorality of liberalism, I have wondered why I’d never
heard this idea proclaimed from any pulpit.
No theologian or televangelist informed my conviction that
redistributionist policies violate the Eighth Commandment. Indeed,
if one had to name an author who showed the keenest perception of
this issue, it wouldn’t be the evangelical bestseller Rick Warren,
but the atheist Ayn Rand. As the apostle Paul explained in the first chapter of Romans, however,
moral truth is “manifest” even to pagans, “so that they are without
excuse.”
Yesterday, so-called Christian conservative columnist Michael
Gerson accused bailout opponents of being blinded by
“ideological purity.” He would have hit closer to the mark had he
blamed their opposition on moral clarity.
