It occurred to me that much is happening in the big-picture-philosophy world that contributes to the stress of some people. (Could it relieve the stress of some?) I recently had a discussion with one such person about their attic and property taxes. Specifically, each reassessment brings a new discussion about a storage room in the attic. It seems that the building plans show an alternate room in the attic. The alternate room was not finished when the house was built, but plywood was put down so the area could be used for storage. I’m certain many of you have space in your attic where you store stuff, (for lack of a better term.)

The situation is that each time the property is reassessed, it is based on the generic building plans, purchased from one of those plan books you can get al Lowe’s, not the actual building constructed. It would seem that this is easier that way, for the reassesser. Each time, a trip to the local tax office, a short wait in line, and the explanation that the information is already in the file, resets the floor area which establishes the amount of tax owed.

For some reason, this stuck in my craw. I can’t seem to shake it.

The tax is based purely on the assumption that the more you own, the more you are able (and obligated) to pay, every year. There is an income/wealth test for property ownership. If you cannot afford the tax then you are obligated to sell the property to someone who can. This skews property ownership towards the ones who have and against the ones who have not. The haves must take some of wealth they already have to pay for the property they intend to keep. Those who have not, must earn enough to pay income taxes and use a portion of what is left to acquire property. Then they must earn enough to pay income taxes and still have enough left to pay the property taxes. A person of moderate means often cannot inherit property and afford to pay the inheritance tax, income tax on their moderate income, and have enough to pay the recurring property taxes. There is an income/wealth test for inheritance.

How is it that the government is somehow entitled to more tax money, based simply on the wall treatment of an attic room? There is no link between that room, and any service the government provides. There is no link to the function of government. But that is not unusual; there is no link between sales taxes and the use of those taxes. So it took me a while to figure out why I could not let this one go. My conclusion is that property taxes are immoral. I believe that all confiscatory taxes are immoral.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it is easy to say such, and just as easy to discount such with the argument that there are legitimate functions of government, and that they must be funded. Even so, this is my conclusion: Just as tyranny is the opposite of freedom, the taking of a portion of a person’s property, for the simple reason that it exists, is an infringement on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bear with me, this sounds a little like a math proof. You know the ones we had to learn in high school geometry? Ok, so nearly all of you just clicked the delete key. Kudos to you.

For the rest of you, show me where my logic fails. The founding fathers wrote the constitution, in part, to protect the ownership of private property. They believed, as I do, that the ability to keep the fruits of one’s labor is the basis for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The short version, if a person raises crops, just enough to survive, and cannot keep them, that person will starve. If a person can just feed themselves and the government takes the smallest portion, that person starves. Today, if a person lives on their own land, their own property, and never leaves, takes no service from the public at large but stays on their property for their entire life, they would loose that property in the name of supporting the common good as defined by those collecting property taxes. Today, a person is not free to live of their own devices. Today, a person who raises enough food to support themselves, has to raise enough additional to sell at market to pay the property taxes or have the property confiscated to pay said taxes.

The break even condition is unsustainable for the individual. One must make enough extra, be wealthy enough, to support the programs deemed needed by the governing body (street sweeping, welcome centers, etc.) or become a ward of that body. In the example I have chosen, the person who owns enough land to feed themselves and never leaves the property or takes any service from anyone outside their property, must sell a portion of what they raise to pay the taxes, and then presumably sign up for food stamps to eat. This person would have to give up feeding themselves to support the program that would feed them. That is, of course if they could qualify for food stamps and own property. In theory, this person would have to sell a portion of the property to pay the taxes and each year, the ability to feed themselves would diminish and a portion would have to be sold to make up the difference. Eventually, the property would be gone, and the person would be a ward of the state. This additional burden on the state routinely requires increases in revenue, which makes it more unlikely that a have not could earn enough to own property.

I call this unsustainable because you must either create enough wealth in excess of what it takes to survive at the government manipulated standard of living and pay for your share of the care of those who do not, or be one of those who do not. In other words, you must either be an excessive wealth producer and support the programs of the government or be a wealth consumer and survive on those programs. You cannot survive in the middle, there can be no sustained middle class.

A person living by one’s own labor, burdening no one else, totally free from owing anyone, is in a downward spiral. They would owe a portion of their property to the government for the simple reason that they exist and own property. Someone in the past, who earned excess wealth, (more than enough to feed themselves), paid for that property with money which was taxed as income if it happened in the last 70 years. But if for any reason the excess wealth production slows enough, to less than roughly two times that needed to live, and if they ceased to produce excess wealth to be used for government programs, the government will confiscate said property and put it in the hands of someone who will. The government comes first.

This person could loose their property because the assessor classifies attic storage space as “livable” space which moves them from the just-barely-feeding-themselves and funding the government category to the soon-to-be-a-ward-of-the-state category. I could not show up on their door and insist that they support my social agenda with a portion of their property. If I showed up with an armed person and insisted at gunpoint, I would go to jail. If I organized a municipality and showed up with a uniformed tax official and insisted that they pay a portion of the official’s salary with their property, I gain the power to imprison that person and take their property. The taking of property to spend on causes not supported by the person who just had their property taken, does not become moral when more than half of us vote together to do so. Theft by proxy is still theft.

I ask this: Are you free? Can you live alone on your own property? Are you free to live your life regardless of the unrelated decisions of someone else? I suggest you are not free. You only own your own property, keep your own income, pursue happiness, so long as you are allowed to do so. Your property is only yours if you are producing tax revenue in which case the government will “allow” you to keep it.

Are we moving toward freedom or tyranny? Can you still sell it all and go bankrupt to pay for medical procedures to save yourself or a loved one? Will that freedom be lost because it is deemed “unfair” or the process too expensive for the single payer to pay? Tyranny is the opposite of freedom. Which is more moral, freedom or tyranny?

Why then are progressives just as unhappy as conservatives with his reaction, or lack thereof? Is one perspective accurate and the other politics? The answer to these questions can be reduced to the heart of all the modern day debates about the appropriate roll of a national government in a modern society. In a word, it is about theology. This story serves to contrast the two apposing perspectives.

First, progressives believe that intellect and ideology are more important than experience. They believe that a person who has the greater good at heart, will draw better conclusions than someone with their own self interest at heart, intelligent or otherwise. They believe that all intelligent people come to the same conclusion, that serving the greater good of humanity always leads the intellectual to the correct answer, in other words, the perfect solution. Looking after one’s own personal interests seems not only selfish to the progressive, but inefficient as it cannot lead to more than an imperfect, self serving solution.

Second, conservatives believe, as the founders did, that individuals seeking to better their individual lives discover the best answers in a world where almost all answers are compromises in outcome. They believe the more complex the variables, the more likely the answer will be a compromise. In other words, there are no perfect solutions, but everyone can adopt the solution that minimizes the compromises most important to the individual while maximizing the benefits most important to the individual.

As it relates to the oil spill, the progressive believes that the collective intellect, concentrated in academia and national government, better considerers appropriate action than leaving private individuals and groups of individuals called companies to consider the risks of doing business and preparing to meet their responsibilities. Progressives passed a law, the Oil Pollution Act, et. al. which put coordinating oil spill discharge abatement and cleanup funding and coordination squarely in the federal responsibility column. They used the crisis of the Exxon Valdez spill as an example of the imperfect disaster response produced by the private sector. This act limited the liability of an individual company and put the responsibility on the taxpayer. The result is a skewed view of liability and responsibility and more potentially catastrophic, the view of risk tolerance. The EPA describes it like this,

The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was signed into law in August 1990, largely in response to rising public concern following the Exxon Valdez incident. The OPA improved the nation’s ability to prevent and respond to oil spills by establishing provisions that expand the federal government’s ability, and provide the money and resources necessary, to respond to oil spills. The OPA also created the national Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is available to provide up to one billion dollars per spill incident.

(Please know that I am sure this was written by some public relations liaison or similar who liked the way this sounds, without any concern that it gives insight into the liberal leanings of the writer or that taking it grammatically literally changes the meaning to one that could not have been intended. I suspect the writer was more interested in saying thank you for the increased funding than in stating liberal intent. But the hair splitter in me must be appeased. – Shannon)

Consider carefully the wording. It was in response to, “public concern.” It was not in response to cleanup technology or techniques, but in response to opinion. No politician ever poled public understanding of technology or techniques, they all pole opinion. The assumption was that the shortcomings in the Valdez spill response were not human or technological shortcomings or the best combination of compromises, but an imperfect response when a more perfect one obviously existed, evidenced by public opinion.

Second, and more profoundly, the assertion that the, “OPA improved the nation’s ability . . . by establishing provisions.” This statement asserts that such national ability improving provisions are affective by, “expand[ing] the federal government’s ability.” Can one really say that, “our nation’s ability to prevent and respond to oil spills” shows any signs of improvement? Just as confusing is the assertion that our abilities improved, “by establishing provisions that expand the federal government’s ability to prevent and respond to spills.” I read this as asserting that simply writing “provisions” to expand federal government abilities, increased the nation’s abilities. Remember for a minute that the federal government gets its “money and resources,” its abilities, from the nation. The presumption and blatant statement is that simply shifting money and resources, and by doing so transferring responsibility and authority, from state governments, individuals and companies of individuals to the federal government, improved the nation’s abilities to prevent spills. How is that working out.

Ok, so what does this have to do with the collective diametric ideologues’ agreement to be offended with the President’s response? There are two areas where big government is the appropriate blunt instrument. One is when a hindrance is wanted to deter some behavior, such as controlling immigration or the import of dangerous materials like e coli tainted lettuce from Mexico. The second is when we want something done which has no immediate economic justification but has general populace support, like putting a man on the moon or using the military to spread democracy and free markets.

The progressives believe that the President had everything he needed to save the Gulf region because he had authority and resources to do so, but did nothing. The President could have denied requests for safety waivers, perhaps preventing the spill, and could have commandeered cleanup vessels and started burning off excess oil after the spill, in accordance with the established safety plan. He did none of these things. The conservatives are unhappy because the blunt instruments of hindrance were not waived when the circumstance warranted it. The environmental hindrances to private development have been misapplied to disaster prevention and the Gulf state’s governments are awaiting permits pending environmental review intended to derail said private development. Oil skimming boats sent by other governments are being held pending safety inspections, not inspections to prevent damage or injury to Americans and our property, but to prevent danger to their crews. They are checking to see if they have enough life boats, life jackets, and fire extinguishers to be allowed into our waters. These people came in the boats they work in every day, to waters patrolled by the U.S. Coast Guard, a decidedly safer condition than they left behind, only to be stopped for their own safety.

Simply, progressives consider President Obama a traitor. He must certainly have access to the best liberal intellects and therefore must be able to determine the best solution. They decide the only reason he would not implement such a solution, must be to better himself politically at the expense of the Gulf ecology. This is not just traitorous, but blasphemous to their theology. They see him as having said the right (left) things to get elected but was not a true believer.

Conservatives see a President who surrounds himself with legal experts in legal hindrance, who refuses to talk to the experts in private industry because he does not trust them to be honest with him. Why would a private expert (even one working for BP) not be honest with the President, especially when it is their shinny hinny’s on the line? The conservative believes his reason is based in the theological belief that all oil industry employees are evil, selfish and insincere.

There are only two things in my opinion that President Obama could possibly do to help things in the Gulf. Both are contrary to his theology. Recognizing that they are nonetheless the most feasible compromise, could establish him as a great leader. First, he could suspend the hindrance culture and let the experts do their thing. Second, he could convene a group of BP-competitor experts to determine how to put the proverbial man on the moon. They have self interest motivation and expertise. The worst he could do, and I suspect will do with religious conviction, is to convene a group of Harvard Law professors to decide who’s ass to kick, and threaten criminal prosecution of those responsible. In other words, listen to his cabinet and advisors.

If he continues to float the idea that he might hold people on the lost oil rig criminally responsible post mortem, I predict he will be contemplating what went wrong, post Gulf economy, and ultimately post political defeat.

But it occurred to me that I have noticed a series of events recently which made me remember her. I take some consolation for the friendships that ended over the years, in that each person who is no longer a friend, at least learned to recognize those traits they would not be able to tolerate in their next relationship, just as she served this purpose for me. We learn that the Jeep CJ-5 with the V-8, big tires and rag top is a lot more trouble than it is worth. We learn over the years to respect substance and view rosy promises with suspicion. We learn this not because we have been wronged, but because we better defined the difference between what we think will make us happy, and what does so over the long run.

President Obama recently promised the world that America will not use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks against us. My suspicion was aroused immediately and the really important points about this assertion are in the stated, and implied, and effective exceptions to this promise.

First, you may remember me saying that limits placed on the town council by the town council are meaningless. If the council has the authority to place a limit on itself, it has the authority to release that limit. For the President to promise not to use nukes in response to an attack on America is at least arrogant, at most naive. For such a promise to have any meaning, one would have to assume that an attack on America would be so benign that our sovereignty would not be at risk. Could anyone really believe that they could attack us with the intent of occupying this country and ANY defense would be off the table? So this promise can only have meaning to those people who would attack us, in the belief they could prevail, but were deterred from doing so for fear of nuclear retaliation, but would now reconsider. We would gain no benefit in so limiting ourselves much less stating so publicly. Would we not prefer that they postpone their attack for such a fear?

So, if this promise is not for the benefit of our reluctant but nearly emboldened enemy, then who? The theories abound as there seems to be no immediate explanation. One such theory is that this is for Iran’s benefit. The theory is that Iran would not want to be on the naughty list of countries who are not protected against US nuclear attack since they have not agreed to non-proliferation. Come over to the light side of the force and we will agree to settle our differences with conventional weapons? Again, I am skeptical. Does anyone believe that this will result in an Iran who prefers a cozy relationship with the Great Satan over their stated religious imperative of destroying it?

Again, our enemies will not be impressed. Those we hope to pressure do not view this as a carrot and it certainly cannot be interpreted as a stick. Our allies, who we are sworn to protect, certainly cannot say that the US should not use ANY method to protect them from annihilation from non-nuclear attack when conventional weapons cannot prevail. Who is left? Who is he talking to? Well, this is where the cynic in me comes out.

This leaves our reluctant allies. This leaves those who tolerate us as long as there is a mutually agreeable arrangement. Greece, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, in short, mostly middle eastern countries who do not like us being in their back yard much less the threat of nuclear attacks in their part of the world. We want to tell them that we will not attack anyone in their back yard since we can handle any skirmish in that part of the world without having to flex our muscles that hard.

The bottom line is this: we will not stop at any limit to defend ourselves. No country would expect any different and few would hesitate to use nuclear weapons if available, to defend themselves, even if they would wait until it was the last resort. Indeed, the countries that spend most of their money on social programs and also have nuclear weapons, have little options prior to nuclear escalation if the US military does not fill in the gap. The President cannot take nukes off the table because he can just as easily put them back on, without prior notice, and potential aggressors know that. The explanation that stands out to me, mostly because I recognize it from my past, is that the President wants to be liked. The only explanation that makes sense to me, is that the President is trying to say that which will be well received by someone.

The President is most certainly assuring our non-nuclear allies that we will still do anything to protect them, including nuking the bad guys, and most certainly aware that our enemies who might attack us still know that we will do anything to protect ourselves, including nuking the bad guys. So the only ones who this could be directed at are those he has enough contempt for to tell them what they want to hear and enough confidence that they will believe him.

The promises seem shallow and meaningless and I expect him to lose friends just as my friend’s crush lost hers. The world is a suspicious place, where the US is concerned in particular. Very few places have populations gullible enough to believe promises of restraint prior to an uneven or unfair fight. Protected and secure people are often the most gullible and I suspect that the President is accustomed to talking to and hearing from such people in this country. I fear that the rest of the world will react in much the same way they have to the rest of the President’s speeches suggesting that the US should be a softer presence in the world. I fear that they will applaud his words, and continue with the same principled foreign policy they had before such proclamations. I fear that the shallow promise, not based on any clear principle, will stand out in contrast to the principled foreign policies of these countries and of America past. I fear that only those who have temporarily suspended disbelief will believe our President, and that only those who would attack us or our allies will consider acting on it. I fear that advertising some arbitrary limit to our defense has only rhetorical gain, but considerable potential loss.

The Great American Experiment followed the sacrifice of, “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor” in defense of an idea. The idea that individuals, free from the tyranny of central command and control, protected their individual interests better than any unrelated protector, no matter how kind, caring or otherwise motivated. The Great American Experiment was funded, fought, and died for on the promise that freedom led to higher standards of living for everyone, greater innovation in business, agriculture, and every other aspect of life for everyone it touched, successful and failing alike. The government would be as limited as possible, the people as free as possible.

Carl Marx, believed the antithesis of these ideas. Marxism suggests that such freedom, and the fact that some people would be immensely more successful than others under such freedom, hurts the average person. Marx believed that for some people to succeed, others must fail, that the size of the pie is fixed, and who gets large pieces and who goes hungry is mostly random, except that dishonest people predisposed to fraud will skew things to their advantage. The typical honest person will suffer under the abuse of the dishonest. People are better served, in his theory, when each produce according to their abilities, and a central authority distributes according to one’s need. The average is better served when everyone follows the plan.

Every society in human existence has either answered to a central authority like a king, or had some system whereby the people chose their governors. In early history, a king who fought for the position was best able to fight to defend his people from invaders and pillagers, or to invade and pillage neighbors. Most were still farmers and hunters. Later, when technology progressed to the point where people could produce more than they consumed, trading came on the scene with the evolution of the middle man (middleous homosapien). This relied on fair play and people were hunted down and killed for foul play. Knowing who could be trusted and a person’s reputation became valued knowledge. Middleous man evolved to make a living off of what they knew instead of what they could grow or hunt. This only happened because there was enough excess produced to support people who did not directly hunt or gather food, make clothing, or build shelter, and there was efficiency in producing a couple of commodities where the climate was best suited to it and trading them for goods that could be more efficiently produced elsewhere. (This is why we raise beef and corn here, and they raise sugar cane in the tropics). It was almost unregulated. The middle men got together and formed colleges, or congresses, (groups of like minded people to serve a common end). Being a member of such could encourage producers and buyers to deal with you. The members of such groups would promise better and better prices to producers, and better and better quality to the buyers. Some would temporarily make a better living by such promises than from what they knew. They promised more than their competing middle men, until they could no longer produce and the group collapsed. They were replaced.

This system was ultimately replaced by the selection of fair play representatives (governors) by consensus. This made the selection based more on the perception of the candidate’s abilities than on actual performance. (Sound familiar?) Sometimes the selection was fair; sometimes it was coerced and intimidated. Indeed, control of all societies has been and is by governments chosen by a range of methods, with violent seizure of power after surrender on one end of the scale, and free and frequent elections on the other.

I am only concerned with the violent seizure method in that it is no more or less likely an end to any society, regardless of where their system currently lies along the scale, and is therefore mostly unpredictable. Such systems arise when the people are not able or willing to withstand its takeover. My concern is with the other end where America selects its government. Every society in human existence who chose their governors based on promises of representation have ultimately fallen to wasteful spending. The cliché is that they fell when the electorate voted themselves larger shares of the stores of grain than they were motivated to produce when fed with free grain. It is another of human’s natures. Until the mid 1900’s, these happenings were part of common education.

These are well known facts. In the pre-American world, kings tried to motivate their subjects with a system of taxes and entitlements. Prior to America’s founding, it was generally believed that anarchy would ensue without divinely inspired and chosen leaders. Many cultures still believe that today. Our founders believed that no one is more or less divinely created than the next, and that anarchy ensues without a divinely inspired population. They conceived a system whereby people could correct tyranny by choice. They conceived, debated, and persuaded the acceptance of a system that limited the power of the government to only that which the people authorize it to have. They demanded limits on government which could not be changed by the government serving those limits. They knew that human nature would compel elected officials to promise ever increasing rations from the public stores, and that once government control got sufficiently complicated, one size-fits-all policies would be the only way to manage the complexity thereby limiting innovation and individual motivation. They believed that nearly every government activity must be controlled locally, or fail.

So here we are. We stand at the cross roads where intellect faces human nature. On the one hand, intellect can rightly lead us to the conclusion that perfect management of a well motivated populace, provided for in accordance with the needs of each, eliminates suffering caused by bad decisions made by the individual. Human nature can lead us to accept Marx’s arguments without challenging the assumptions inherent in them. Marx’s utopic theory requires that human nature be resisted by the managers so that corruption does not foul the system, and that human nature be resisted by the managed so that defense of individual best interest no interfere with the common good even when contrary to individual good. Human nature explains why corruption is so common in countries with Marxist leaning systems. The self interest of the briber is provided for by the indulgence of the self interest of the bribed. Innovation is only relevant when conceived by or recognized by the managers and no incentive exists outside of ego for the innovator or the observant manager. Likewise, human nature leads us to vote ourselves larger shares of the public stores on the promises that “they” will be sufficiently taxed and sufficiently tolerant of the taxes to continue to produce grain undeterred. Human nature leads some to believe this despite the evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, intellect can lead us to look for examples of both systems, socialist and free market, and determine which provides better conditions for the poor, or disadvantaged. Human nature would be to choose the best performing system.

Have we chosen the system whose theory stands up to rational debate when devoid of real world examples, or the system that has proven successful in practice despite being too complicated to fully explain every action rationally?

The choices, as I understand them are these: Recognize that we have the best medical system in the world BECAUSE the rich pay more than the poor, BECAUSE the rich have access to new treatment and technology before it is cheap enough for mass consumption; Recognize this it is this arrangement which makes medical care for the poor more available than it was a decade ago; Recognize that medical treatment of the poor is more available than it is in any other system in the world; Recognize that much of the medical treatment available to the world’s poor only exists as a result of the American medical system; Recognized that more treatments are available to the poor than would be if FDR had been successful in realizing socialized medicine; Recognize that a generation from now, the poor will have less access to as yet undiscovered treatments under socialized medicine than would be available if the rich continued to fund research and development; Recognize that socialism, Marxism, communism, statism, progressivism, liberalism, or however else you chose to label it, has led to the death of more people in the world than all other calamities combined; Recognize that because these systems rely on complete adherence to the common plan and surrender of the protection of individual defense of one’s best interest, violence and oppression are always used to control the population; Recognize that the wealth created by American entrepreneurs has funded the defense of most of the free world for two generations. Simply, choose to protect the rights of the individual to succeed or fail by one’s own decisions, unencumbered by agendas of social justice and wealth redistribution.

Or, choose the path chosen by every free society ever known. Choose the path dictated by emotion and human nature. Choose to bankrupt the country by trying to plan and provide an ever increasing array of goods and services, devised by a politically motivated committee that sets it own limits, provided to increasingly less motivated and demonized producers.

Will intellect win out over emotion? Am I wrong in my belief that I am on the side of intellect and not emotion? Is it arrogance that got us here in the first place, to believe that the human nature cycle of tyranny-escape-freedom-prosperity-guilt-entitlement-dependancy-tyranny can be short circuited without the pain of tyranny fresh in our minds? Are we destined to go down as the society arrogant enough to think that it manage all things for all people, just as the Romans did?

I hope not. I hope, that the success of the Great American Experiment thus far, can inspire us to not relinquish this prosperity and freedom in return for short term illusions of social justice. I hope that we recognize the success that took us from 13 colonies, too worthless to warrant the resources to control those colonies, to the most prosperous, powerful, free, and generous people in the world in less than 100 years. I hope that we collectively believe in our hearts, that the reason people immigrate here from every country in the world is freedom and opportunity and not a random coincidence. I hope that we as a country do not give in to the human nature that leads us to believe that our neighbors make poor choices at home, but perfect ones when electing officials, that these same neighbors make poor decisions at home, but perfect ones once in Washington DC.

I hope that we recognize that it is because of human nature, not despite it, that socialism and statism have always failed wherever they existed, and that free markets have succeeded everywhere they have existed. There is only so much motivation garnered from threats of fines and imprisonment, but the motivation of the hope for a better life is only limited by one’s imagination.

I assert that his logic is flawed, in that a right is self evident, and therefore cannot be provided, denied, or limited by government. It cannot be a universal right to get a medical procedure on the one hand, and morally acceptable to deny such a procedure on the basis of political will, or budgetary limitations and priorities, or on the basis of age. It cannot be a moral imperative to provide “free” healthcare to the young, but expect the elderly to resign themselves to the reality that they only have a decade or so anyway and should medicate themselves into a blissful end. It is either morally required that we treat everyone, or that everyone take the blue pill.

But the flaw that struck me the strongest was a flaw of faith. The President is a self described Christian and claims to be his brother’s keeper and his sister’s. But he is not suggesting that he personally provide for them and does not have a history of making such efforts. He is suggesting that the government collect the assets of the unwilling, with threat of imprisonment, and disseminate those assets for medical procedures for the able. Some of these procedures are immoral to some of the unwilling. He is not passing the plate, he is picking up the congregation and shaking money from them, and don’t make him come to your house!! And, he is suggesting that the government limit people’s ability to help their neighbor with their medical needs outside of the government process because it would not be “fair” that some people live with wealthier, kinder neighbors. He suggests that this be done so that he can be acting morally.

I assert, that you cannot hire someone to do a moral act for you. If ignoring people who do not get adequate healthcare is immoral, then hiring someone to “collect” money from the unwilling and use it to assure that no one is ignored, all the while blissfully ignoring the fact that the healthcare has declined for everyone is doubly immoral.

You cannot act morally by proxy. The idea that you could hire someone to pray so that you don’t have too is laughable. The idea that we could hire the government to take care of matters of individual morality is just as laughable. If it weren’t so serious, that is.

But it does not appear that this is a moral issue for the President. If I were the President, and I were fighting for morality, I would be selling the important points to the House and Senate who write the Bills, not trying to sell
it to the American people when Congress was preparing a Bill that contradicted me. It appears that the point is that the industry be moved from private hands to public hands and any argument/excuse/outcome will suffice. He is
concentrating on selling the idea to us, while leaving the details to Congress. This is not a man acting on a moral imperative.

Promising us that he intends to protect the hen house, but leaving security details to be negotiated between the roosters and the foxes (that would be the Congress and the special interest groups/lobbyists/industry representatives)
makes the hens nervous. If he were really morally motivated to protect the hens, he would not leave the details to anyone else.