Bryan Fischer
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid: not proper roles of government
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
If you were to try to figure out what the purpose of our federal government is by looking at what it actually does, you'd have to conclude that its purpose is to involuntarily transfer wealth from producers to non-producers.
In other words, its purpose seems to be to rip off some citizens and give this legalized plunder to other citizens.
This is an ungodly and unconstitutional recipe for national suicide. We are committing hari-kiri on our nation's body politic, and we are on a course that is simply unsustainable. Welfare programs of one kind and another — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, etc. etc. — are on a pace to consume every last bit of tax revenue by 2052. That, of course, would leave nothing for anything else, including justice and national defense. The U.S. is on course to become a crippled, effete, punchless, beggarly welfare state.
This is what happens when government does what liberals want it to do instead of what God and the Founders intended it to do.
We will never be able to bring our spending back in line until we have determined exactly what government ought to be spending its money on in the first place. We must clearly and unambiguously identify the purpose of government and then fund only those activities that are in line with its purpose.
The purpose of government, according to the Founders as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is to "secure" for us citizens the unalienable rights that have been given to us by God.
There is no unalienable right to somebody else's money. In fact, God's standard is precisely the opposite: "Thou shalt not steal." Not only do I not have a right to other people's money, I should be punished for acting as if I do.
The three essential unalienable rights identified by the Founders are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the last of which was the Founders' euphemistic way of referring to property. The very purpose of government, then, is to protect and secure our rights to our lives, our freedom, and our possessions.
In other words, government's purpose is to protect our lives from abortionists, murderers and Muslims, our liberty from kidnappers, hostage takers and human traffickers, and our money from robbers, thieves, scammers, swindlers and rip-off artists like Bernie Madoff.
Government's purpose is to protect our money, not steal it by force to give it to favored objects of its synthetic "compassion." There is no "compassion" in legalized theft.
But a visitor from Mars taking an objective inventory of what our government does in action would have to conclude that such Robin Hood maneuvers are the very essence of government, its very reason for existence.
According to the Judeo-Christian tradition on which this country was founded, the singular purpose of God-ordained government is simple: to execute justice. Its God-ordained purpose is to carry out vengeance against anyone — internally or externally — who deprives another citizen of his life, his liberty or his property. That's it.
As Paul puts it plainly in Romans 13:4, government is "God's servant, an avenger who carries God's wrath on the evildoer."
This means that government's God-ordained functions are clear and straightforward, to protect us from enemies domestic and foreign, to secure our fundamental rights against threats from within (justice) and threats from without (national security).That's it.
God's design is that we should have a system of justice which is fair to everyone, which is based on sound laws, and which is based on the equality of everyone before the bar of justice.
So we need legislative bodies to enact laws that are consistent with "the laws of nature and nature's God," as the Founders so eloquently put it. We need an executive branch to apply and implement these laws, and we need courts to settle disputes over those laws.
We need an effective law enforcement system, with officers bearing God's authority to investigate, arrest, detain and prosecute violators of those just laws.
We need places to incarcerate criminals, a system to execute murderers, rapists and kidnappers, and a system to force restitution in cases of crimes against property.
And we need an effective military to protect us from external threats to our life, liberty and property, just as we need an effective system of justice to protect us from internal threats.
In other words, the Founders were exactly right: the purpose of government is to secure, protect and defend our unalienable rights, the rights given to us not by government but by God himself.
Charity, you will notice, has no legitimate place in government. Charity is for private individuals moved by compassion, giving generously of their own resources to alleviate need. Charity is not, as our liberal friends believe, giving away other people's money. Charity, as Christ taught us, is giving away our own money.
As James Madison, the father of the Constitution, said, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." And that was in a dispute over a mere $15,000 in welfare!
Giving away other people's money, money forcibly extracted from the wallets of citizens under threat of incarceration, is just theft and greed cloaking itself as nobility.
It's time we put this nation on a glide path toward getting government out of every function other than justice, national security, and the strictly enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8. Let's plan over time to close down Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare, give all that money back to the citizens and look to them, the resourceful, responsible and generous American people, to take care of themselves and each other.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
April 30, 2011
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
If you were to try to figure out what the purpose of our federal government is by looking at what it actually does, you'd have to conclude that its purpose is to involuntarily transfer wealth from producers to non-producers.
In other words, its purpose seems to be to rip off some citizens and give this legalized plunder to other citizens.
This is an ungodly and unconstitutional recipe for national suicide. We are committing hari-kiri on our nation's body politic, and we are on a course that is simply unsustainable. Welfare programs of one kind and another — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, etc. etc. — are on a pace to consume every last bit of tax revenue by 2052. That, of course, would leave nothing for anything else, including justice and national defense. The U.S. is on course to become a crippled, effete, punchless, beggarly welfare state.
This is what happens when government does what liberals want it to do instead of what God and the Founders intended it to do.
We will never be able to bring our spending back in line until we have determined exactly what government ought to be spending its money on in the first place. We must clearly and unambiguously identify the purpose of government and then fund only those activities that are in line with its purpose.
The purpose of government, according to the Founders as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is to "secure" for us citizens the unalienable rights that have been given to us by God.
There is no unalienable right to somebody else's money. In fact, God's standard is precisely the opposite: "Thou shalt not steal." Not only do I not have a right to other people's money, I should be punished for acting as if I do.
The three essential unalienable rights identified by the Founders are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the last of which was the Founders' euphemistic way of referring to property. The very purpose of government, then, is to protect and secure our rights to our lives, our freedom, and our possessions.
In other words, government's purpose is to protect our lives from abortionists, murderers and Muslims, our liberty from kidnappers, hostage takers and human traffickers, and our money from robbers, thieves, scammers, swindlers and rip-off artists like Bernie Madoff.
Government's purpose is to protect our money, not steal it by force to give it to favored objects of its synthetic "compassion." There is no "compassion" in legalized theft.
But a visitor from Mars taking an objective inventory of what our government does in action would have to conclude that such Robin Hood maneuvers are the very essence of government, its very reason for existence.
According to the Judeo-Christian tradition on which this country was founded, the singular purpose of God-ordained government is simple: to execute justice. Its God-ordained purpose is to carry out vengeance against anyone — internally or externally — who deprives another citizen of his life, his liberty or his property. That's it.
As Paul puts it plainly in Romans 13:4, government is "God's servant, an avenger who carries God's wrath on the evildoer."
This means that government's God-ordained functions are clear and straightforward, to protect us from enemies domestic and foreign, to secure our fundamental rights against threats from within (justice) and threats from without (national security).That's it.
God's design is that we should have a system of justice which is fair to everyone, which is based on sound laws, and which is based on the equality of everyone before the bar of justice.
So we need legislative bodies to enact laws that are consistent with "the laws of nature and nature's God," as the Founders so eloquently put it. We need an executive branch to apply and implement these laws, and we need courts to settle disputes over those laws.
We need an effective law enforcement system, with officers bearing God's authority to investigate, arrest, detain and prosecute violators of those just laws.
We need places to incarcerate criminals, a system to execute murderers, rapists and kidnappers, and a system to force restitution in cases of crimes against property.
And we need an effective military to protect us from external threats to our life, liberty and property, just as we need an effective system of justice to protect us from internal threats.
In other words, the Founders were exactly right: the purpose of government is to secure, protect and defend our unalienable rights, the rights given to us not by government but by God himself.
Charity, you will notice, has no legitimate place in government. Charity is for private individuals moved by compassion, giving generously of their own resources to alleviate need. Charity is not, as our liberal friends believe, giving away other people's money. Charity, as Christ taught us, is giving away our own money.
As James Madison, the father of the Constitution, said, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." And that was in a dispute over a mere $15,000 in welfare!
Giving away other people's money, money forcibly extracted from the wallets of citizens under threat of incarceration, is just theft and greed cloaking itself as nobility.
It's time we put this nation on a glide path toward getting government out of every function other than justice, national security, and the strictly enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8. Let's plan over time to close down Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare, give all that money back to the citizens and look to them, the resourceful, responsible and generous American people, to take care of themselves and each other.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
