Exclusive to STR

August 29, 2008

It's not a right; it's theft, plain and simple.

The arrogance of those who proclaim rights to "public" this and that (education, libraries, military defense, whatever) astounds me. But those who sincerely believe they are part of an honest and fair exchange between participants in a social construct deserve, perhaps, the benefit of the doubt. Let me try to explain it as I see it.

You've heard of the "national debt," I assume? You know that the "country" is paying for everything with borrowed dollars, right? So when you receive some "service" from "your" government, you do realize that the payment for this service is not actually being paid by anyone, don't you? No. What the deal is, is there are I.O.U.s which are written to pay for all this stuff. Since the government has long ago run out of current money in hand, all transactions with the government are funded by claims made against future payments. Loans, if you will.

But these loans are not like the ones you make with Ned, where he loans you $1,000 for a year and you pay him back and give him some extra to pay him for his generosity and expenses. No, these loans are to be paid back by the "taxpayer." So what you have in essence is a deal where you get something you want now, like maybe a "free" education for your kids, or a group of hired killers to wreak havoc on some small foreign country you think deserves it, and the guy who has to actually pay for this is someone down the road who never agreed to any of these things. No, he is told that he "owes" taxes. He will be obliged to pay for your goodies, or his stuff will be taken from him, his house will be sold off on the courthouse steps, to pay for the "free education" your child got "from the government."

Is this starting to make sense? People seem to think that stuff they get from the "government" is free. It's not. Think about it. If there were free stuff then no one would need to go to work and make things, they could just go and get the magic free stuff whenever they needed something. Nope. There is no such thing as free stuff. Everything that we have is something that someone somewhere had to work hard to make.

So you can feel all self-righteous and claim that "society" owes you universal health care, or good "public" transportation, or good retirement benefits or whatever, but what you are really saying is that you deserve to have someone else wait on you--you are the king and everyone else is part of your private serfdom whose lives are forfeit to your own very special one.

That is a fraud and you are but a common thief. Maybe worse than a common thief, for at least the common thief is honest and doesn't go around acting all holier-than-thou about how he deserves the stuff he's stealing.

But it's even worse than this. You wanna know why? Remember the debt? The "national debt?" There is no money. It's all debt. Anything you are getting from the government now will be paid for by forced extractions (a pretty word for slavery) from the lives of innocent children who have not even been born yet. So we're not talking just slavery and theft here, we're talking cannibalism. The national debt is the literal consumption of the lives of people who have not even been born yet. You're eating your grandchildren.

So please, when someone tells you it's okay, it's free, it's from the government, stop and ask yourself if that is how you want to treat your grandchildren. I doubt that it is. We all want the very best for our children, our grandchildren. Most of us want the very best for our friends and neighbors as well. Some of us even want to see smiles on the faces of those funny looking brown people in far off lands. In fact, most of us are really kind and generous people all around. Don't let that get lost in the con-job the vote-buyers use on you. Stuff isn't free. We all have to work hard for our lives. And that's okay. We're worth it. Treat each other with respect. We're precious.

I bid you peace and love.

P.S. And if you "work" for the "government" (or a government contractor) - Stop. Get a real job where you actually contribute value to the world instead of sucking the marrow from the living bones of the rest of us.