The world's largest Ponzi scheme, Social Security, is sanctioned by the United States government — a program that is, in short, a coercive property transfer from young to old individuals.

Social Security has weakened our social fabric. It transfers moral responsibility from the individual, or family of individuals, to society. Moral responsibility is not a social issue, but an individual one. Aging Americans being taken care of is a noble end, but noble ends do not justify an abuse on individual rights, and in this case, the means do not even achieve the desired ends. If there ever were a just cause to violate rights, this surely isn't one.

The welfare state has likewise weakened our social fabric. The growth of the welfare state raises the question: "why on earth, while over the past 50 years, affluence and quality of life in the United States have risen to the highest they have ever been, have welfare rolls grown over that time span?" Like Social Security, these programs may have noble ends, but they also do not achieve the desired ends (they actually have made the situation worse) and violate individual property rights once more.

The newest expansion of social programs forcibly transferring property from one group of people to another is "universal health care" or "Medicare for all" or some form of these concepts. This is propagated under the guise of helping Americans, but in reality, it is prioritizing one politically advantageous group of Americans over another. One man's benefit is being put before another's at the whim of political elites.

The pattern illustrated above is repeated. Universal health care does not and will not achieve the desired ends and, you guess it, violates individual property rights and liberty. The desire for all to have health care doesn't justify trampling our rights.

One must wonder, "What is the disconnect here? How do people continue to support ideas that violate our rights while not even achieving the desired ends?" Simply put, the electorate doesn't know the subject matter. Their heartstrings have been pulled by skilled politicians.

When talking to your family or friends about health care, you might be able to start at a point of agreement: indeed, it would be nice if everyone could get the coverage or the care he wants. But we don't live in an ideal world, do we?

This statement usually soon follows: "Well, I am OK giving a little for the less fortunate!" To this I respond, "No one is stopping you! Why should it have to be forced?" Could there be a clearer example of the practice of the majority tyranny our founders fought to prevent?

For someone to truly support government-subsidized health care for all, Social Security, welfare programs, or any other government-run redistribution program, one must admit to being OK violating one individual's rights in order to achieve a desired end. One must admit being OK violating one individual's rights for the sake of another individual's benefit.

The argument for such programs is always deduced to violating one man's rights for the benefit of another.

In all these cases listed above, the rights of individual property and labor (which is an extension of the individual) are being violated. I challenge anyone to present evidence of how forcing one party to hand over his labor or property without consent is not in direct violation of our right to life and the actions needed to sustain that life.

What would the founders say about these programs? They would dismiss them wholesale!

Your friends or family might object by trying to paraphrase the Constitution:

"we are promoting the general welfare!" If we move on from the salient truth that confiscatory and redistributive policy is such an egregious violation of our individual rights, we can address the utter perversion of the term "general welfare."

This has been a topic of debate in Congress, the High Court, and the American public for nearly our entire existence. We do have guidance in the founders. "General welfare" was never intended to mean whatever Congress thinks might be helpful, or whatever constituents deem helpful or desirable for themselves. It is largely agreed upon by scholars, and substantiated by the correspondence from the debates and early congresses, that the promotion of general welfare was meant to promote the national interests only through the specifically enumerated powers — to further their ends — given in the Constitution and nothing more.

Whether one looks at the more expanded view that John Adams or Alexander Hamilton held or the more narrow view James Madison and Thomas Jefferson held, both are so far removed from the current prevailing view in D.C. that little can be compared.

A simple analysis will show why our founders believed that these redistributive schemes that discourage individual responsibility, violate individual rights to labor and property, and abdicate moral responsibility to society are a perversion of everything they fought for. It is time to throw off this despotic bureaucracy! It is our right; it is our duty!