I hope you’re well, as are your wee ones!

Wealth is not “distributed” like some local newspaper arriving at the doorstep of subscribers. Wealth is created and earned by work, ingenuity, creativity, and most of all risk.

If only a few are brave enough to take a risk why should the cowards be upset? I doubt I will ever be among the elite earners in this country, because I am too afraid to risk the money I have to generate more. I work for a salary. I get benefits. I have a sense of security that comes with having someone else bear the risk of my endeavor. (Ironically it is a nurse that owns the company I work for. He is brave enough to risk losing everything, while, I, the doctor am too much a coward). I make a good salary. But the owner of the company that I am contracted to, makes more. Should he? Sure. He took the risks that provided the jobs and health care for several small towns. He doesn’t have as prestigious an education as I have. If he worked in his field of expertise, he could not command as large an hourly wage as I command. Should he really make more money? Of course he should, he was willing to take a risk (it could have failed. He could have lost everything and had to start over).

Was wealth really “distributed”? No. It was earned.

His second point is a much more direct assertion that Christian, in particular, should be in favor of the government providing health care. Your disbelief in a Greater Power certainly makes approaching or discussing this aspect of Dave’s post less significant. My point to Dave is that religion, like most things, is not as simple as one verse of scripture. If the God of the Bible is real then we must understand His nature and His laws in order to live as he would have us live. Seemingly benevolent government interventions are not necessarily pleasing to God if they are in some way in violation of His laws.

So as far as Dave’s original post goes, the differences we have in where we start from certainly determine the difference in where we arrive at. With regard to religions, they are a lot like governments. They are not all founded on correct principles. They don’t all work equally well. But no matter how perfectly they are built, imperfect people will be involved in running them, and that will turn off some on lookers to the organization. A skeptical approach to religion though, is very different than a skeptical approach to God.

I’m sorry I offend you when I state a belief that citizens of socialized nations do not have the same personal and individual experience, opportunity, or feelings of gratification when they care for a person in need. Since the action of caring is bureaucratically removed from their personal actions, it does stand to reason that they experience less of the event. As far as the individual who voted for a socialized plan feeling like he has accomplished some greater good, this also relates back to Federalist paper #10 that you referenced.

Federalist #10 is an essay about the destructive power of “factions”. The risk seen as most dangerous by Madison is an “interested and overbearing” majority. For this reason he suggested that direct representation through democracy would lead to factions and that “auxiliary precautions” must be taken, specifically a republican form of representation. This, he suggests, would decrease the possibility of tyranny of the majority or of ineptitude of the majority. Those not voting for the socialization of some service or commodity could certainly argue that it is the ineptitude or tyranny of the majority that is requiring them to give of their substance to fund this new program. On the other hand, those voting for it find it exceedingly more affordable to mandate as it won’t be just their money that funds the thing.

So if a person volunteers to fund a good thing and does so entirely with his own money, it still seems more virtuous than if a person volunteers to fund a thing partly with some of his money and some of someone else’s money.

Regarding the Constitution: you are right that it expanded the role of the federal government beyond the role it had under the Articles of Confederation. (The much larger expansion of power occurred after the civil war) However, it was specifically written to delineate what limitations the government would have. It does not exist to limit individuals. It exists to limit government. Some founders wanted more centralized power and some wanted less. Madison of course wanted more as did Hamilton while Jefferson wanted less. However, all of them wanted clear limitations on the government’s power. Federalists were against a Bill of Rights because it was seen as unnecessary (as the government was limited by the constitution) and because rights not specifically listed may be construed as non existent.

I agree with the Federalists. I believe our federal government should be stronger than our state governments in the areas it has authority. I suspect there are certain rights that are not listed in the Bill of Rights and therefore have been usurped from the people by the government. (the right to make capital improvements on your home without a permit or permission from the government for instance). I also believe, as did the Federalists, that the reason a strong federal government will not become tyrannical under our system, is because the States have independent governments that balance the power of the Federal government. Sadly, this power has become weaker and weaker until we now have a central government so large that it is determining how to educate our children, what the local minimum wage can be, how health care can be provided, and how fast we can drive on our highways, to name a few. This was not the vision of our founders.

With regard to Rush Limbaugh, I don’t listen to him. He is obnoxious and arrogant. Sometimes he’s right. But he is so self absorbed that it’s too painful to endure listening just to find those times.

Whether or not half of the country accounts for 14% of its earnings or just 4% has nothing to do with what they pay in taxes. If everyone had to pay at least some fraction of their income, then they would have some concerned interest in where the money is going, if they pay nothing then it doesn’t matter how much is spent or where it goes. This is at the heart of the tyranny and ineptitude of the majority issue.

Just like we should not suffer taxation without representation we should not tolerate representation without taxation.

“The US constitution was written to protect citizens from the government. It did this by putting limitations on government. It was not written to put limitations on citizens.”
This is incorrect. The US Constitution greatly expanded the power of the Federal government and the Bill of Rights was added to appease the anti-Federalists (those against the Constitution) and guarantee that the Federal Government would not encroach upon the States in those matters…to which James Madison felt that individual liberty was much more at risk from the States than it was from the Federal. Among many other reasons, the US Constitution was created to protect liberty from faction, government or otherwise (see Federalist Papers #10). As companies, industries, and other organizations have grown in size, so too has the Federal Government had to grow in size in order to provide balance; or suffer a change from a Democratic Republic to one of Corporatism. I agree that it has overstepped its Constitutional boundaries at times, although I would guess that we would disagree on the specific times.

“Since nearly half of the US population pays no income tax whatsoever, it shouldn’t be difficult to get them to vote for a plan that gives away larger and larger amounts of the federal budget to fund any number of social programs…. So we still don’t know, and probably can’t, if the generous European socialists are generous with their own money, or with their neighbor’s money who is voting some other way.”

This argument is eerily familiar to Rush Limbaugh’s argument here. (http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/menu/top_50__of_wage_earners_pay_96_09__of_income_taxes.guest.html). On the flip side both your statement and Rush’s, point out the unequal distribution of wealth in the U.S. where half of its citizens combined make less than 14% of all the income. The U.S. has less inequality than other more capitalistic countries like Mexico, but more inequality than the other more socialistic countries like Norway, which also has a higher GDP per capita than the U.S.

“I suppose if the objective of health care is to make people live as long as possible, then life expectancy is an important statistic. If, on the otherhand, you’d like knee replacement and it’s been rationed out of your right to obtain it, then perhaps living longer isn’t such a blessing after all.”

Indeed this is true, but I am somewhat disappointed that you did not look up the statistics on overall health of countries before posting. Again you will find that the U.S. lags far behind the countries with universal health care on all the measurements done by various groups.

“Moreover, isn’t the whole idea that the opportunity to obtain health care is a “right”. If someone else is deciding that a person can’t have something because it has been rationed then how exactly is that protecting the right to obtain the care?”

Many universal healthcare systems do not ration healthcare any more that the current system in the U.S. The main difference in the U.S. is that for-profit insurance companies are doing the rationing. Uncovered procedures can be obtained for a price under the current U.S. system and also under most universal healthcare systems.

As to ideology, it is very easy to get caught up in the way things should work or the way things should be; and yet many an ideal has failed when the rubber met the road. The problem comes when ideology trumps reality and people hold to their purist vision despite the obvious failure. The resurgence of extreme lazie-faire economics is one example of an ideal that even Adam Smith knew was wrong since the 18th century; and yet, I will admit that pure socialism has also been proven to be a failure. So, we must look at each individual case to determine the right amount of governmental intervention; and in the case of health care the statistics show a more socialistic leaning is the most efficient.

It is far more a question of what is the role of government, not is government good or bad or honest or dishonest.

In the past our government has superseded it’s constitutionally prescribed role (and really fowled things up). Continuing to operate outside of the constitutional role it’s been given, in order to clean up the mess, sounds reckless to me.

Expecting them to participate in the clean up work, would be like asking the drunk to drive the ambulance from the scene of the accident he had caused. He shouldn’t have been driving to start with. His driving was legally impermissible. But since he caused a mess, we’re going to turn a blind eye to the law again, so that he can help clean up?

The US constitution was written to protect citizens from the government. It did this by putting limitations on government. It was not written to put limitations on citizens. The Bill of Rights (the part of the constitution the follows the explanation of how our government will be limited) explains certain rights that our government is charged to protect. It must protect these rights, but it must do so within the limitations that the constitution prescribes. I would fear the government less if they would obey the law under which they derive their authority. Both major parties are equally guilty of usurping authority not granted under the constitution. It seems that we only worry about it, when it isn’t the party we voted for that is usurping authority. I don’t think there are any externalities that justify complacency as we lose our freedom to a power hungry government.

With regard to your continued belief that socializing compassion does not affect the givers adversely I would like to make a few more remarks. First, you are right, the poor are very unlikely to care where help comes from. But that was never my point, so it’s a terribly feeble rebuttal. Second, democratic governments represent the voice of the majority of the people. That is often times very different than the voice of the all the people.

On the first point: I claim, and you have yet to demonstrate otherwise, that when the role of compassion is relegated to the government, individuals feel less morally obligated to become personally involved. The statistics that you brought to the discussion support this claim, as personal charity is much higher in the US than elsewhere. In some of my other posts I make a point about why this is important (at least to me). As Christians we will be judged for our thoughts, our words, and our actions. I do not believe, and I doubt many would, that that judgment will be based on the actions of the government of whatever country we happen to live in. The judgments and expectations of God are personal. Because of this, I suggest that although it may no difference for the receiver, it can make a tremendous difference for the giver, if compassion and charity are left to be a personal and individual task. Now I am not suggesting that organized charities should not exist. Nonsense. We should start them. We should work at them. We should donate to them. But we should not legislate them.

On the second point: You write,

“Governments are composed of people and “socialistic European” countries are also largely “democratic”; therefore, if the “socialists” didn’t feel a responsibility to the poor of other nations they would certainly be voting the other way.”

Now I’m not going to investigate what portion of Norwegians or EU citizens in general have voted for socialist leaders in recent elections (I suspect you could tell me) but even if it is as high as 90%, that still leaves 10% of voters who may have preferred to donate some of the money they earned to a cause of their choice, instead of the cause their federal governments choose. Isn’t this the epitome of freedom? To have the self determination to choose how you will love and assist your neighbor.

The very flaw with democracy (as pointed out early in our experiment as a nation by Alexis de Tocqueville) is that when a group of citizen realizes that it has the power to spend someone else’s money, by the way they vote, the system will begin to fall apart. It should be obvious, that it becomes much easier to vote for a plan that gives away money, when the money being given away isn’t yours. Since nearly half of the US population pays no income tax whatsoever, it shouldn’t be difficult to get them to vote for a plan that gives away larger and larger amounts of the federal budget to fund any number of social programs. It takes only a very small fraction of the tax paying population to bump the number above 50% and therefore the “voice of the majority”. So we still don’t know, and probably can’t, if the generous European socialists are generous with their own money, or with their neighbor’s money who is voting some other way.

Certainly, being generous with someone else’s money cannot be considered a virtue (at least not by God).