Our Problem Is Immorality
Opinion Editorial by Walter E. Williams -
Apr 22, 2009
58 ratings from readers
Do
you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly
used to serve the purposes of another? For too many people, this is no simple question to answer — but it should be.
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.
