The Bondage of Good Intentions

Editor’s note: I was copied on an e-mail exchange discussing spending and the national debt.  I didn’t know many of the people on the cc’ list, so I didn’t want to push my opinion into their inboxes.  However, I do think this is an important topic, so I thought I would post my thoughts here.

In defending recent policy decisions, one e-mailer called for civility, saying,

…There is no question that the debt is a problem but let’s reason together, not throw darts…

OK.  Let’s reason.  Here’s my idea to reduce the national debt.  Every time we think of asking the government to establish or extend an entitlement program, we first ask ourselves one simple question…

“Is it worth enslaving my son in order to accomplish this goal?” (or daughter, grand-son, grand-daughter, etc…)

If the answer to that question is yes, then go ahead and spend the money.  If not, don’t.  As background, let’s replace two words in the following excerpt from wikipedia and see if this sounds familiar?

Debt bondage is often a form of disguised slavery in which the subject is not legally owned, but is instead bound by a contract to perform labor pay tax to work off a debt, under terms that make it impossible to completely retire the debt

The recent Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is just one (intolerable) symptom of our problem.  Since the federal government is obviously incapable of protecting our childrens’ future from economic cannibalism by today’s special interests, we need to get to work with our states.

If spending was limited to its intended, Constitutional purposes, there would be no concern.  However, the irrational, polluted, virtually unlimited definition which is now being used for commerce among the several states, is leading our children into debt based bondage.  It must be stopped.  For our childrens’ sake, in addition to working the federal voting booth and the courts, the states and the people must also work together to bring serious Tenth Amendment pressure to bear on the federal government.  Every legitimate avenue of resistance must be pursued.

As Patrick Henry once observed, “There is no retreat but in submission and slavery!  Our chains are forged!”.  Today, more importantly, our childrens’ chains are forged.  Will we allow them to be shackled?

Steve Palmer is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Tenth Amendment Center.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2010 at 12:00 am. It is filed under Blog and tagged with National Debt, Spending. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.