[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government...
In an article titled “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall“, which appeared on The New Republic yesterday, Georgetown University Professor E.J. Dionne, Jr. made some excellent points about the pointlessness of the divide-and-conquer style of politics that’s become so prevalent in the last half-century in America.
While I generally agree with the sentiment expressed by the good professor, I do have to take exception to this seemingly throw-away statement near the end of the article:
“At the time he was asked to comment on Gates, Obama was trying to make the case for universal health coverage — for the largest step toward greater social justice since civil rights…”
In a free society, the concept of “justice” needs no qualifiers; all citizens are treated justly (i.e., exactly the same). Adding the qualifier “social” to the concept of justice perverts the meaning of the term, allowing it to include forcibly taking resources from one group (”the rich” are a favorite target) to pay for the privileges of another (”the poor”).
Perhaps the most important principle on which our republic was founded is the concept of individual liberty: the idea that – as long as what we choose to do doesn’t injure another citizen, or infringe on their rights – we are free to live our lives the way we choose and to enjoy the fruits of our labors.
As Thomas Jefferson said in his first Inaugural Address:
“[A] wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”
When the state can forcibly take the bread off of one man’s table and give [some of] it to another man who did nothing to earn it, then neither man is truly free: both are slaves to the state. And that’s the essence of socialism: that the individual is subservient to – and dependent on – the state.
You can have justice or you can have socialism. You can’t have both.
“Social Justice” or Socialism?
In an article titled “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall“, which appeared on The New Republic yesterday, Georgetown University Professor E.J. Dionne, Jr. made some excellent points about the pointlessness of the divide-and-conquer style of politics that’s become so prevalent in the last half-century in America.
While I generally agree with the sentiment expressed by the good professor, I do have to take exception to this seemingly throw-away statement near the end of the article:
In a free society, the concept of “justice” needs no qualifiers; all citizens are treated justly (i.e., exactly the same). Adding the qualifier “social” to the concept of justice perverts the meaning of the term, allowing it to include forcibly taking resources from one group (”the rich” are a favorite target) to pay for the privileges of another (”the poor”).
Perhaps the most important principle on which our republic was founded is the concept of individual liberty: the idea that – as long as what we choose to do doesn’t injure another citizen, or infringe on their rights – we are free to live our lives the way we choose and to enjoy the fruits of our labors.
As Thomas Jefferson said in his first Inaugural Address:
When the state can forcibly take the bread off of one man’s table and give [some of] it to another man who did nothing to earn it, then neither man is truly free: both are slaves to the state. And that’s the essence of socialism: that the individual is subservient to – and dependent on – the state.
You can have justice or you can have socialism. You can’t have both.
Spread the Word: