Richard Adams wrote:
>
> Sam wrote:
> > The US Constitution says nothing about providing cradle to grave care.
>
> Perhaps you're not familiar with the 'General Welfare' clause which has
> been used for a great many things. From Article 1:
>
> Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes,
> duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common
> defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties,
> imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
It is not in the general welfare of the United States, really its citizens, to make it a socialist
state.
Maybe you are unfamiliar with this:
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America."
Socialism is fundamentally anti-liberty (anti-freedom). It is so by _design_. Socialism destroys
rather than secures the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
Hayek, _TRTS_, p28
2
The Great Utopia
What has always made the state a hell on earth has
been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.
—F. HÖLDERLIN
THAT socialism has displaced liberalism as the doc-
trine held by the great majority of progressives
does not simply mean that people had forgotten
the warnings of the great liberal thinkers of the past about
the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because
they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men
had predicted. The extraordinary thing is that the same so-
cialism that was not only early recognized as the gravest
threat to freedom, but quite openly began as a reaction
against the liberalism of the French Revolution, gained gen-
eral acceptance under the flag of liberty. It is rarely remem-
bered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly au-
thoritarian. The French writers who laid the foundations of
modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put
into practice only by strong dictatorial government. To them
socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the revolution” by
a deliberate reorganization of society on hierarchical lines
and by the imposition of a coercive “spiritual power.” Where
freedom was concerned, the founders of socialism made no
bones about their intentions. Freedom of thought they re-
garded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and
the first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted
that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards
would be “treated as cattle.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friedman, _CAF_,pp2-3
Introduction
IN A MUCH QUOTED PASSAGE in his inaugural address, President
Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask
what you can do for your country.” It is a striking sign of the
temper of our times that the controversy about this passage cen-
tered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the
statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his gov-
ernment that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society.
The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies
that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view
that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility
for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your
country” implies that government is the master or the deity, the
citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country
is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something
over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and
loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a
means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts,
nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He
recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the
goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national
purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which
the citizens severally strive.
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for
him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather
“What can I and my compatriots do through government” to
help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our
several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our free
dom? And he will accompany this question with another: How
can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frank
enstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to pro
tect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us,
and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the
concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our
freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise
our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is
also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this
power initially be of good will and even though they be not
corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract
and form men of a different stamp.
Much of the rest is about the Frankenstein question. Don't do it to yourself. Don't do it to your
family. Don't do it to your friends. It isn't friendly to be a socialist.
