Most of our nation’s great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values.
Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality.
You say, “That’s a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You’d better be prepared to back it up with evidence!” I’ll try with a few questions for you to answer.
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him?
Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends.
In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That’s simple. What’s complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else.
If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one’s private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.
The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda.
A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind’s most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another?
A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget.
There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government.
Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral.
People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They’ll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes.
As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes?
In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.
I
am all too afraid that a historian, a hundred years from now, will
footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed
private property rights and limited government but it all returned to
mankind’s normal state of affairs — arbitrary abuse and control
by the powerful elite.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has authored more than 150 publications, including many in scholarly journals, and has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending.
22 comments from readers
Today though, we are not bears nor can we be. As such there are very few people who can really claim that something is "theirs" in the purest sense. Saying nothing in modern society is entirely someone's is not the same as saying it belongs to everyone of course, but even the most basic claims of property rights requires some sort of community to enforce those rights.
Lets say someone pays cash for some land in California and then builds a house with his bare hands (no contractors or even family help)using materials he created himself by chopping his own lumber, drilling his own oil and making his own plastics. On one hand we could say he completely owns the house to the nth degree. On the other though how is he going to turn on the lights without connecting to the public power grid? How is he going to get running water without the department of water and power? Who will keep his home from being burned down or burglarized without police and fire departments?
Without the greater society at large personal property, even if it was enforceable without a system of courts, is useless. Government makes such a society based on laws and critical services (like a fire department) possible in a way a volunteer society would not be (given the high amount of people who would not volunteer for shifts as community firemen and policemen but would expect the benefits). Even if you didn't pay public employees in the system isn't volunteering to fight fires when its not your house on fire an act of relative selflessness that is the beginning of the type of government you decry?
On a separate issue the idea of the truly self made man is a bit of a myth. Sure there can be self made millionaires (exceptionally skilled doctors for instance) but certainly not billionaires. At some point the difference between merely rich and truly wealthy comes from taking some part of the value generated by another into your own pocket.
For example the skilled doctor could (and does) bill patients 100 dollars an hour for the work of his nurses and assistants; he then pays them 20 dollars an hour and pockets the difference which is fair neither to the consumer who overpays 4 times over nor to the nurse who provides a service for which she is not fairly compensated so the doctor who did not do the work can line his pockets.
That is not to say they should make the same or anything silly like that, the main point is wealth, like security and property rights, is generated only through community. Without community the greatest of products would have no market; without the blue collar workers the white collar professions could not exist.
The government is probably not the best tool to correct such an imbalance, but to say someone made his hundred million dollars alone without acknowledging the thousands that made significant contributions is disingenuous at best.
I agree that it is immoral to use physical force against another human being, but what morality does Williams refer to that makes that a fact-based and logical conclusion? Most of the religious moralities of the past and certainly the collectivist morality of the 20th century (still with us by default) saw the use of physical force against dissenters, the uncooperative (heretics or counter-revolutionaries), those who refused to contribute funding as fully justified, either by mandate of God or the "interests of society". And many of the unwilling participants, as well as the victims, of these forcible practices did not object in the name of any contrary moral principle.
When leaders of the European and American Enlightenment did subject war and torture and subjugation of persons by church and state, we did see some progress in mankind's moral behavior on a social and international basis for nearly a century.
But, what this anti-exploitation, anti-force moral premise Mr. Williams talks about is a deep foundation, rooted in fact and set in the middle of a thorough moral system that clearly comes from the needs and nature of human life and applies to every person's daily life in practice.
We won't find it in a mess of contradictions. Consider Mr. Williams's own words. He says that he is morally "against taking the earnings of one American to give to another" for purposes not chosen by the person who earned that money.
Yet, he easily agrees with the socialist Civics 101 lesson which teaches that, "We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government."
Really? How do you reach that conclusion? Can you think of a morality which both holds your earnings as yours and, at the same time, proves you owe it to the expenditures voted on by Congress? Those who are big-spend politicians did not throw away the US Constitution in order to indulge money-grabbing whims. I know it feels like that, if you are the taxpayer. But, using words of the Constitution, intellectuals on Mr. Williams's level argued in favor of a morality that enabled them to interpret its language just the way he did. They never argued that the sole role of government is to secure your right to your life (and the property you earn in order to keep and enlarge and enjoy your life), your right to your liberty and your right to your pursuit of your happiness. They always argued that you do not own your life; you owe it, your time and your earnings to social purposes determined by others.
To say that you have rights means that there are things that you possess which others may not even vote on, even if they are a majority. But, to defend this view we need a definition of "rights" and we need to see it derived from a morality which speaks to the requirements of human life.
So, where do we find a moral system that provides firm footing for the intentions of the Framers of the Constitution, establishing a government entrusted with no other task than the protection of individual rights?
Clearly, we don't find it among the Conservatives regularly featured on this AtlasSphere forum. In all of world culture, past or present, I can point you to only one voice which did the deep work of philosophy to provide us with a fact-based moral system which, once and forever, defines and defends the value of your life and isolates your moral earnings from the reach of social purposes you do not choose to fund. I refer to America's moral philosopher, Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged, the most inspiring novel ever written...if you love your life on Earth.
Progress will recognizable when the first Conservative intellectual asks himself how he can declare his life to be his own property, when religion says it belongs to a God who insists on altruism and collectivists who say his life is only a discardable cell of the body of society. And, how can a person claim that his life belongs to himself. That is not a self-evident starting premise. He cannot prove it to Marx or Hegel or Plato or his university professors...unless he has studied the moral basis of individualism?
Read Rand, learn the Freedom Philosophy, enjoy life!
We have a consitutionally mandated legal obligation, but a moral obligation only to contribute to the national defense and defense of individual rights -- not to pay for those changes to the Consitution that have been at the whim of the majority or the interpretative whims of the Supreme Court, the Legislature, or the Executive Branch and at the expense of the rights of individuals. I think it would help to state what the functions are so there is no room for interpretation.
I enjoy your columns!
Thanks for asking in one sentence what I think is the most important question of all time!
Bravo!
Its funny you mention clergy, because the precident based nature of our legal system has always reminded me of the pope situation, previous actions are always assumed to be right. The constitution (which I believe atleast the first 15 or so amendments where written to be very understandable to the common semieducated person) is now said to be equally controlled by the volumes of decisions offered by usually well meaning supreme court justices (for very specific adaptations ). These renderings are now being used with the athority of the constitution itself. My understanding has always been that the job of the Supreme Court was to decide the constitutionality of laws not to change/control it's meaning.(That of the Constitution it's self)
I apologize for the tangent, its an excellent article which I greatly enjoyed. And am looking forward to living/seeing the theme "When the law is unjust, the Just are unlawful." A very Randian theme indeed.
Thank You again.
The beauty of your article is it's simplicity in pointing out how the cheap, superficial, counterfeit "charity" of altruism is nothing more than enslavement, politically- or religiously-granted veneer of respectability notwithstanding.
If YOU CHOOSE to support someone or something you are passionate about, that's charity. If someone else puts a gun to your head, or beats your head in with philosophy or dogma to physically or psychologically coerce said support, that's altruism - America's #1 crisis!
A more intriguing fact is, people see this clearly with the welfare state, but are in absolute denial about the WARfare state, so AIPAC and the Whore of Babylon march glibly on "selling out your future and collecting the bids."
"This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government."
Please explain to me why you consider extent to which the constitution allows to collect taxes to be a line between taxes as moral obligation and taxes that are immoral and forcible servitude of some in favor of others. What makes that line between, say, "just tax burden" and "already a theft" so self-evident? I believe that even taxes collected in compliance with the constitution can be seen as expropriating some, under the threat of force, to subsidize others (and costly administration in between). Thank you very much for your answer.
Opponents of Obama's mission to destroy America are at last bold enough to call socialism by its name. And socialism is just another technical term for "theft", the same as burglary, armed robbery, taxation.
I recently saw an interview with Senator Harry Reid, in which he repeatedly denied that the income tax was not voluntary, because citizens fill out forms and send them in, rather than having the government send them a bill for services rendered, such as a utility company does. The questioner kept bringing up the fact that failure to file could result in fines or imprisonment. Reid continued to yammer on as though he did not understand a word. How can a man so stupid, or evil, or both, ever attain a position of power in a supposedly free country?
The lesson of Ayn Rand was this: the only power they have over us, is our own concession to that power. It is time to pull the plug.
This forum is geared toward non-religious philosophy. But I believe a turning point in 20th Century history came when Pope John Paul II returned to his native Poland and proclaimed that the time had come to stop being afraid.
Fear is not the proper emotion for an American. Note how our leaders hide behind armed guards, electronic and physical barricades. Those who proclaim belief in the founding principles and soldiers who gave their lives and limbs in the service of the government are branded by that same government as potential terrorists. The government is afraid of us. Perhaps they should ask themselves why.
Ayn Rand based her moral arguments, as I understand them, on the realities of our species: We are individuated as a physical fact of existence. Isabel Paterson, in God of the Machines, describes us as self-generating, self-motivating organisms. Emerson stated that Nature does not allow anything to survive that does not survive on its own. If virtue resides in the physical facts of our survival, then morality as the implementations of virtue is the same.
Our universally poor child rearing practices do not teach us to survive as human beings because they do not address what the natural goal of our species is. It is toward that goal--a clear and real picture of the mature state of our species, that child rearing and self education must be aimed. Until we accept what our life form is and how it functions, we will continue to attempt all sorts of experiences on ourselves centered on a tribal (group) model. In tribes, the individuals are fungible, interchangeable units of a whole. In themselves they are useless and unimportant.
What is ironic is we are starting the "war" some of us have been waiting a lifetime for...the clash between the tribal mentality and all is brutish, thuggish social experiments and the individual as the natural, orderly basis for human organization. Unconsciously, we have created all sorts of technologies that reflect the truth of both our natures and the natures of our future.
Up the rebels!
This alone rules out the majority of citizens.
Prof.Williams view is 100% correct, but he and the rest of us will always be fighting a rear-guard action against the dependency,fear, and guilt of the altruists.
The second error is that 50% of income earners have no federal income tax liability. (Anti)Social (In)Security and Medicare IS an income tax on the wage earner. The employers portion is an excise tax. Self-employment tax is also an income tax. In fact, this is the major tax burden of low income earners.