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« Back to Opinion & Analysis
Coercion Is Not Neighborly
Editorial for the Houston Community Newspaper
Steven F. Hotze, M.D.
September 11, 2008
"It's just being neighborly," Obama explained to Bill O'Reilly during his recent television interview. This comment was made when O'Reilly challenged Obama's economic program as wealth redistribution based on socialism.
"Oh, what about that waitress who needs our help?" responded Obama. Somehow, Obama thinks that taking your money through government taxation and giving it to someone whom he thinks needs it is being neighborly.
Coerced giving is not neighborly and it's not virtuous. It's theft. Why is it that when the socialists want to help someone, they want to use our hard earned money to do it? It would be interesting to see the annual charitable giving amount of Obama.
Since the New Deal of President Roosevelt, which began in the 1930s, the idea that the government should provide womb to tomb security has been advocated by the left and accepted by a large plurality of the citizens. Over the past 70 years we have experienced a dramatic growth in the federal government which is suffocating the liberty of the common man and woman and undermining our economy.
Reagan explained it this way, "If it moves, the government will tax it. If it keeps moving, it will regulate it. Once it stops moving, the government will subsidize it."
With the growth of government entitlement programs we have created an underclass of millions who cannot govern themselves. They are a voting block for the liberals who buy their votes with entitlements. The liberals seem to have destroyed their initiative and work ethic intentionally. This gives liberals the opportunity to promote their politics of greed and envy during every election season.
If government entitlement programs had worked, then we would not have had the chaos that occurred in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. We would not have over 60% of the children in the inner cities born out of wedlock. We would not have half the children in inner city schools drop out of high school.
If you keep doing what you've been doing, then you will keep getting what you've been getting. Obama is right when he says we need a change but Obama's answer to these problems is to offer more of the same worn out socialist programs. "We need more government," proclaims Obama.
The problem is that we have more government than we need. Our founding fathers pledged their wealth and their lives to limit government in order to prevent it from destroying individual liberties.
Sarah Palin gets it. In her homecoming speech in Alaska last Wednesday she said, "We, Alaskans, know that government is the problem. We must allow American ingenuity, inspired by the free enterprise system, to solve our problems."
Government doesn't create productive jobs, businesses do. The free market system has permitted us to build the most productive nation in the world. It is through the voluntary exchange of goods and services in society that people's needs are best met.
Let's be neighborly but let's do it voluntarily.
About Conservative Republicans of Texas
Steven F. Hotze, M.D. is president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and founder of Hotze Health & Wellness Center in Houston, Texas.
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