Wedge, I dunno if I've ever told you that I love you, but in a nohomo sort of way, that is the case.
So, Tylale is it? I'm going to guess you're a libertarian, eh? Has Glenn Beck tickled your fancy in the past? Perhaps you've heard of Thomas Paine before. You know him, I'm sure. The guy who wrote Common Sense? Yeah, it argued how the British basically had no right to treat us colonies the way they were treating us. Taking away our rights, forcing taxes upon us, not letting us be represented by parliament. Yeah, that guy basically took everything that was happening and wrote how we don't need the Monarchy. A few months later, the Declaration was written. He was a hero who challenged big government and told the world how the people were better off without it.
But let's look at something that I don't think a lot of Americans are willing to accept as fact.
Thomas Paine was a socialist.
Egad, I know. How can the man who single-handedly influenced the creation of a free nation ran by the people possible believe that the people should help anyone but themselves? Well it's quite simple really.
It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
He then goes on to say:
Create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.
But wait, there's more!
It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called civilised countries, for daily bread... pay to every such person of the age of fifty years ... the sum of six pounds per annum out of the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of sixty... This support, as already remarked, is not of the nature of a charity but of a right.
That would be implemented as Social Security in 1935.
Pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age.
This would be implemented in the child tax credit as a part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
And this one is my favorite. It pretty much sums up the exact flaws of any man who is greedy and also is God fearing.
There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it.
Wedge hit the nail on the head, but if it needs to be said twice, so be it. Our country was founded on the principal that each and every man (yes, even included slaves. They weren't sure they could convince anyone giving them up, but the founders honestly assumed slavery would end within the next 30 or 40 years) had rights given to endowed to him by his creator. To disclude anyone from that, for whatever reason (human rights issues from the past that no longer exist withstanding) is literally unconstitutionally. It's our governments duty to provide that life for any of her citizens.
You say that we're giving money to someone who can't contribute anything to society. Really? How can you possibly say that when you feel they shouldn't even be given the right to try. They might come back with a vengeance in this life and end up paying their taxes for you to live on when you retire. That's beautiful irony, isn't it?
Thomas Paine understood all of that, and was one of the most influential minds of the Enlightenment era; thus were our founders, as they based a lot of their work on his. It's literally embedded within our very country to this day.
There's nothing wrong with believing in the dream of American wealth for yourself, but you need to take in account that our country works on the principals of a common good. What happens to one of us should be felt by another. "Join or Die."
What really needs to happen is a balanced effort from our politicians. They need to stop idiotically rooting for one side of an issue and be willing to see the other side, much like you have failed to do so. You need to be able to sort out the system, root away the corruptness and make sure no one, and I mean no one, gets the shorter end of the stick as that would be denying us the very freedoms we hold dear, as Wedge masterfully explained.
