once again...I give you my friend...Walter E. Williams...

Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. You say, "That's a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You'd better be prepared to back it up with evidence!" I'll try with a few questions for you to answer.

Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends.

In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else. If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.

The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda. A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind's most horrible injustices such as slavery. After all, what is slavery but the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another? A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. We all have a moral obligation to pay our share of the constitutionally mandated and enumerated functions of the federal government.

Unfortunately, there is no way out of our immoral quagmire. The reason is that now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes. As it stands now, close to 50 percent of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes? In other words, once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy.

I am all too afraid that a historian, a hundred years from now, will footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed private property rights and limited government but it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs -- arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.

Who needs moral values? We all know, thanks to our anything goes friends on the left, are keeping people from exploring what their heart wishes. Morals are found in the evil religions of the world. As we have been told, religion, especially Christianity, is at the root of all that ills the world. Those damn Christians are keeping people from getting married, going around saying that abortion is bad, and wanting children to abstain from sex. What the hell are they thinking? Morals... As outdated as our constitution..

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
-Thomas Jefferson

Thanks, Giocamo.

Very nicely written and short article, that gives a quick summary of what America is all about these days. Taxes the way we excercize them today, are nothing short of legalized slavery. All that have changed is we no longer enslave human being simply because of their skin color. We now enslave them because they are producing more.

InvictusV,

Christianity can not be guilty of anything it does not do by force. Where it impedes on people's freedoms, it is guilty, of course. Where it doesn't, it is not guilty.

If Christianity lobbies the law, to outlaw abortions, it is neither moral nor innocent. It is a restriction of freedom of others, whether they subscribe to Christian story or not. But where Christians use their understanding to mind their own business, there is no wrong made.

Christianity, if you wanted to delve into it, is not going to make you a happy man, and a just man at the same time. There is an initial assumption of body-soul dichotomy, at the very root of it's belief system. This is why, one cannot hope to be both just and prosperous, while being Christian. Think about it.