Defining Goodness

America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville, the great French historian and political thinker was right – Americans are a good and caring people. They created a nation that prospered, as any nation can do, when the government is designed to set good people free to achieve and pursue their own path to happiness. This historically unique idea has proved a beacon to the world, attracting seekers of freedom and prosperity for over 200 years.
Today, however, liberals want to redefine the very nature of American goodness. They tell us individual freedom must be sacrificed for the good of the collective and they use our caring and loving natures to incrementally grow a government so big it is destined to collapse under its own weight. They attempt to convince us by playing on our sense of fairness with lies such as these:
You don’t deserve to be rich
When President Obama made his comments last week that implied success does not belong to the successful, no one should really have been surprised. This liberal lie is as old as progressivism. I heard it hundreds of times from liberal professors, but it seems lately, perhaps emboldened by the election of their like minded president, liberals have been more willing to go public with what they truly believe. Remember Elizabeth Warren, the liberal running against Scott Brown for a senate seat in Massachusetts. She said almost the exact same thing, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…”
But what these liberal professors and politicians miss is that while our structure of government provides great opportunity and an environment conducive to success, it provides that opportunity across the board with no guarantee of success. It is individual effort and talent, added to the mix that makes all the difference.
And the people who build those roads and bridges Obama talks about don’t do it for free. They feed their families and support their lifestyle with the pay they receive. Some of them will go on to become executives and business owners themselves. And they will achieve this success under the same infrastructure and using the same opportunities available to their fellow workers.
Conservatives respect this type of success. Liberals tell us it is somehow undeserved and only achieved by climbing over our fallen comrades in the labor market. They mistakenly assume that wealth is not created, but is a finite commodity to be haggled over. And it’s a lie.
Government welfare is morally required.
President Obama has also suggested in recent speeches that government coerced welfare is a moral obligation of the American people. I think the founders, who created a government specifically designed to maximize freedom and responsibility and minimize government coercion might disagree. But let’s assume for a moment he is right. Doesn’t it then beg the question: Is government welfare actually pulling the poor out of poverty – especially since the national poverty rate is now about the same as when the War on Poverty was instituted 30 years ago?
Can we ask if it is moral to allow excessive welfare to bankrupt our nation to the point where basic government services are threatened and the principles that made it a success are destroyed?
Is it moral to deny citizens the right to reap the rewards of their success so the government can insure no one suffers the consequences of failure?
Is it moral to teach our children that success is not something to rejoice in, but is simply the luck of the draw, a gift from the government, that hard work and perseverance make no difference?
Is it moral to rob men and women of their pride in self reliance like when the federal government gives awards to food stamp pushers who are best able to overcome community values such as “Mountain Pride” as if it was a character flaw?
Is it moral to breed government dependency simply to increase the power of government and the politicians who run it?
Isn’t it more likely that morality was never honestly the issue?
That liberal policy like the recent move by the Obama administration to gut the successful welfare reform program by removing the requirement to work is motivated more by politics than the good of the people.
Or that the rhetoric, “this is the moral thing to do,” is really just a subtle way of exploiting the good nature of Americans to increase the power of government.
Tocqueville also said, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Now, according to 2010 census data, nearly half, 48.5 percent, of the population live in households that receives some type of government benefit. Will we accept the bribe?
The Obama Presidency is the crossroad. The next election will determine, literally, whether as a nation we choose to go left down the road of liberal socialism or right in defense of freedom and liberty.
Hugh Bouchelle

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