Rights

-By Dan Scott

As a normal person viewing the entire taxation and government benefit program structure one could not blame them as concluding it is a Rube Goldberg approach to governance. Government policy or more accurately liberal policy is about taking money only to give it back in a convoluted scheme to somehow bring about equality. A myriad of taxes are taken at every level of business and personal activity. This is justified under the guise of government meeting the needs of the people. To decide whose needs the government should be serving, groups of people are stereotyped and assigned victim status being called the poor. The poor it is said needs the government to help them because poverty is not a choice but an accident of birth. The logic goes like this, if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you obviously will want for nothing since your caretakers will meet all your needs and give you every advantage to succeed in life whether that be a guaranteed income for life, a job in the family business, a higher education to work a well paying job, good health care, etc. On the other hand if that same baby were born into a poor household, he/she would have none of those advantages and therefore is it unfair. Since America is a wealthy society, it falls upon society to make it fair by giving everyone a chance to be equally successful.

On the surface such an argument about equality may make some sense until you delve into it’s assumptions. The first assumption is about poverty and wealth being an accident. Neither is an accident, making bad financial decisions doesn’t make you wealthy nor does making good financial decisions make you poor. Success is a choice, not an accident. This is called sophistry, making false assertions using false arguments. It follows that parents are responsible for the care of their offspring and therefore how that parent carries out that responsibility affects the outcome. It is the parent’s responsibility to make good decisions that will benefit the child and themselves. The ability of a parent to give equal opportunity as another parent is an impossibility. The ability of one individual to be equal in every way (both mentally and physically) to another one let alone an entire nation of individuals is also impossible. Inequality is a fact of life and therefore to demand what is impossible is sophistry. The equality argument advanced by liberals is based on the fallacious impossible premise of total equality. The equality as advanced by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence is one of opportunity under the Law with limitations on “government’s ability” of giving one group or individual more to one than others.
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