Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulS
I'm the one who first mentioned Special Olympics but it was in context with a number of other social welfare programs that were all cut. So the discussion was on all the programs. When I later mentioned Special Olympics it was as a proxy for all the social welfare programs that were cut.
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You also mentioned that cutting or increasing federal spending on social programs "is in many ways a reflection of your values." Your simplistic suggestion being that it would be a lack of empathy to cut such funding. You never explained why the federal government was supposed to budget according to empathy. Are we supposed to just assume that because "empathy" sounds like a nice and good "value" that the federal government should spend accordingly.
Can you explain why getting into unsustainable debt in order to empathize is a good "value"? Would you bankrupt your household in order to empathize with someone else's misfortune? Would it cast a negative light on your "values" to cut back on your sympathies in order that you and your family's well being is maintained?
In the U.S. we have various levels as well as different regions or sectors of government. Each has its defined function. They don't all do the same thing. Some things are done better in different sectors than in other sectors. Some things must not be done by one sector if it is the duty of another because that would basically destroy the diversity of responsibilities and lead to the centralization of government into one all-powerful system of governance--an authoritarian, dictatorial regime which is antithetical to our founding constitutional system.
The constitutional duty of the Federal Government is basically being a bulwark against foreign power and a glue that cements the cohesion of the entire nation by regulating a smooth and equal commerce and cooperation among the various states, as well as protecting what is referred to as our individual inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, some of that vast residuum of rights being defined in the Bill of Rights.
The practice of those rights is mainly in the hands of the individuals of this nation. As well, the responsibility for payment of the pursuit of happiness is also in the hands of the individuals of this nation. That is the life and liberty part that the federal government has a duty to protect, not to fund nor prescribe. If the people of various localities wish to collectively fund either as groups or through local government, that is their right.
But if the Federal Government assumes the right of the people as its own right, then it dissolves the bounds of the separate sectors, and even the boundary between the central government and individual freedom from it, even if the intention is benevolent.
As "nice" as benevolent dictatorship may sound, depending on it to remain benevolent is the idiot dream of weak or lazy people who think they can shuffle off their personal responsibility to an omnipotent bureaucracy which is staffed by a few power hungry people--a bureaucracy that taxes the people in order to keep them happy, and must always find more ways to do so to add on to its unlimited ability to provide by taxing and borrowing into infinite debt. A debt that must be payed by those who chose not to fund their own happiness.
That all may sound like "good values" to you, like compassion, but it is well outside of our constitutional system. It is a destruction of it. Rather than compassion, it is a mockery of the notion of "values."