My hometown has a measure on the primary ballot to raise money for the local government schools. Cut backs in state funding have left them in a desperate state--forced to shrink or eliminate vital programs and services, which means the education of our local youth will suffer. This is tragic. Education is important and is worthy of receiving adequate funding. After years of homeschooling my children, both are now attending the local high school--so my children's education will suffer unless the schools receive more money.
In spite of these facts, I can not bring myself to support a law which uses the force of government to deprive others of their property. If people cannot be convinced to voluntarily provide financial support to the schools, I know of no moral principle which allows me force others to act against their best judgment. Our Constitution was written to protect the individual from precisely this abuse of power by government and the majority---even though this original meaning has been severely diluted and even lost in recent years.
It is simply immoral to even
attempt to achieve a goal through the use of force, no matter how deeply ensconced in compassion, generosity, or good will. You may try to persuade your friends and neighbors, and tirelessly work to obtain their voluntary assistance (financial or otherwise) but if you can not convince them, there is no moral basis for employing the coercive power of the state to aid you in achieving through force what you can not achieve through persuasion.
For this reason, my local Measure E is immoral and should be soundly defeated.
For this same reason, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is immoral and should be repealed.
Use of government force to control how much and what kind of energy private citizens choose to purchase, is similarly wrong and should not be allowed.
What is at stake is greater than the plight of our schools, or the uninsured, or man's purported effect on climate. The peaceful coexistence of human beings is grounded upon the recognition of each individual's right to his own life, liberty and property--and only his own. We are neither masters nor slaves, neither our brother's keepers nor the kept.
This does not negate voluntary cooperation or pooling of resources and efforts to achieve community goals. (Many worthwhile projects can not be achieved without joint support and action.) It simply removes the use of force as a legitimate means of achieving one's goals at the expense of others.
The civilized world has come to recognize the immorality of enslaving another human being in order to employ his labor against his will. The next step in our moral progress is to recognize that a man's property is an extension of his life and liberty, and that to seize a man's property against his will is merely another form of slavery.
Until we are able to remove the intrusive hammer of government force from our private lives, our peace, good will, prosperity--and the moral character of our communities-- are in mortal danger.
To be moral in your interactions with fellow human beings, you must either convince him, or you must leave him alone.
In studying the history of how we have paid for health care in the United States, I am struck by two significant aspects of the growth of government involvement:
