Dear Friends,
It seems to me, if something is wrong for me to do, it is wrong for anyone to do, if it is wrong for anyone to do, then it is wrong for a group to do… and if it is wrong for groups to do, then it is wrong for government to do as well. The democratic process does not invalidate natural rights. Government edict cannot supersede God’s laws, no more then a chair can throw off the bonds of physics, and become sentient and mobile. This should be obvious to everyone, but the percent of the World’s population that understand this simple and basic truth, shrinks every day, soon there will only be you and I.
If I as a human being have no right to do a thing to another, steal from her for example, I cannot empower another to do it for me. If I do hire someone to steal from another, I am as guilty of theft as the person I hired. If everyone on my street wanted the property of the people on the next street, we cannot ban together and simply take the items, without committing a moral wrong. Even if the group is very large, the wrong is not lowered, it is instead magnified. Natural rights are God’s laws, and it is presumptuous to believe that anyone or any group, even government, has the ability to do a wrong and claim it as right.
I believe it was Mo Ti who said, One thing bothers me. I do not understand how a person shown a black dot can call it black. But when shown a million black dots they call them white. One would have to inquire about their vision… This analogy compared a single bad thing, a murder, with a multitude of bad things, the killing in wartime. This is not where the logic stops though. The analogy holds for anything that is morally wrong. If I steal from you it is wrong, if I assault you it is wrong, if I destroy your property it is wrong, along with the entire host of sins… and I cannot empower another to do it, even government. We cannot empower anyone else to do what is morally wrong without participating in that wrong.
Democracy does not invalidate this logic. No matter how large the group is, that seeks to wound another, it is morally reprehensible. Even if everyone in the World thought, I should not have the flute I whittled from a stick I found, and mutually agree to take it, the act is still a wrong. If one black dot is bad a multitude of black dots are orders of magnitude worse. If I commit a sin, I am to blame, and no one else. But if I include the people in my sin, I have magnified the infraction, by drawing others into my wickedness. This, in and of itself shows, the larger the group doing a wrong the worse the wrong is.
If I hold up a couple walking down the street from a movie at gun point, and use the money to pay for cancer therapy for someone else, it is still a wrong. The end does not justify the means, the means taints the ends. To argue, the government will put my money to better use than I will, is self centered sophistry. To do something bad to one so that one can do good for another is the road to Tartarus. The good intentions are the pavement.
The opposite view however is favored by the political elite. They gaze longingly at the accumulated wealth of others with a lustful eye. They want what others have built and will use any means to get it. Money you have earned by the sweat of your brow is not yours by this logic, it is the person or group, that has the will and the power to take it. In the end, isn’t that exactly what is happening, when government takes from producers to redistribute to non producers, the elite can, simply because they have the political power to do so… without consequence? To covet the goods of my neighbor, to steal from my neighbor, to bear false witness against him or to kill him is wrong for me, and therefore it is wrong for government to do. Government gets it’s power from us. We give up a little of our sovereignty to government for our mutual good. Good never flows from wrong, but, such spurious arguments are the font of evil. We participate in the elite’s covetousness at peril to our very souls.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
