Beanie Babies and an Intellectual Field Sobriety Test
A few years ago, our Teaching Minister was at a McDonald's when they had a first offering of a certain mini Beanie Baby. He watched as children and some adults descended on the bin like a piranha feeding frenzy. As he watched, he thought "There's a sermon topic here..." I read an article by local left wing screed artist Nick Coleman at Pravda on the Mississippi. From the column lead in, about the proposal for a Twins Stadium built at public expense, I thought that I'd probably agree with him (www.startribune.com/stories/357/5449231.html ). I went to the article and for most the article, I did. I do not oppose a Twins Stadium. Not at all. I do vehemently oppose public financing for a Twins Stadium.
Mr. Coleman talks about public money going to subsidize a privately owned concern, owned by a billionaire who employs millionaires. So far, so good. But, at the eighth paragraph, good ol' Nick shows how he is absolutely incapable of walking an intellectual straight line. He screams that this forcible taking of money from the citizens of Hennepin County benefits the rich but screws the poor. That all this money could go to pay for early childhood education for all at risk kids in the county. And he never mentions that taking this money screws the taxpayers. He ignores all the facts and studies that paying for public education does not get anyone an education. He says that welfare for billionaires is bad, but ineffective welfare is OK if it sounds like it's for a good purpose. That the forcible extraction of someone's hard earned money for a well intentioned, but perfectly useless and therefore dangerous program to the development of children is OK. And so this is a program where the taxpayer really gets screwed! If government education were a product sold on the open market, school boards, Superintendents and the like would be indicted for fraud and deceptive practices. And rightfully so.
And about a minute later, I went to Drudge ( www.drudgereport.com/ ) to look at Joseph Sobran's column. He had posted a column that he'd written just after the Clintonistas sued Microsoft for giving something away. He talked about monopolies. I had some questions during this time to my socialist friend. I told him, if I gathered correctly from his statements about Bill Gates, that Big Software-BAD, Big Oil-BAD,Big Pharmaceuticals-BAD, Big Education---GOOD, Big Regulations-Good, Big Government-Good,no BETTER tending toward BEST. And my friend saw absolutely no intellectual inconsistency in his stance at all. And that the fact that this lawsuit started the avalanche in tech stocks that resulted in the citizens of the United States losing over $2,000,000,000,000 (that's trillions kids) in value. And he thought nothing of it. No connection at all.
And the connection between the two: the coercive force of government. And this while I'm listening to Dr. Walter E. Williams talking about the forceful taking the property of one person and giving it to one that it doesn't belong. Most people would call that theft. The law calls it theft. If I were to go to someone and put a gun to their brainstem and force them to give me $50 and I were to go downtown and give a homeless person that $50, or buy him a meal and a coat with that $50, most people would recognize that as armed robbery nonetheless. Theft. Illegal theft. And yet, the Congress of the United States, through their agents the IRS, takes that same $50 from that same person and gives it to a homeless person. And most Americans see absolutely no problem with the last example. They see one as wrong and the other as perfectly OK. One is illegal theft. The other is legal theft. But both are the taking of someone else's property by force. And just because it's legal doesn't make it right. It was legal to take the property of Jews in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. And then round them up and kill them. It was legal to own slaves 150 years ago in America. Legal doesn't mean moral.
Anyhow, here is the Sobran column titled "Bill Gates, Robber Baron". It's good. And always timely.
www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050526.shtml
posted by Amendment X at 12:13 PM permalink
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