OPINION:
The premise of the liberal-progressive, collectivist ideal is the government knows best and citizens must be guided by a group of enlightened, well-intentioned benefactors. This is a threat to society because it fosters mediocrity and stifles creativity and innovation. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generating actions, and if we do not strive for independence and self-reliance and do not take care to manage our means ourselves, our end will be ruination.
The Democratic presidential candidates reject the concept of individualism and have resurrected the failed, misguided notions and promise of a utopia as articulated in Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Food, clothing, homes and medical care do not grow in nature. These are goods and services produced by people. Who will supply these goods and services? If some individuals are entitled by “right” to the products and work of others, it means those others are deprived of their rights and property. That is enslavement, and no one has the right to enslave another human being.
More and more Americans are blinded by their faith in a government that claims it knows better.
Ayn Rand eloquently cautioned: “There is no difference between Communism and Socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end. Communism proposes to enslave men by force, Socialism by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”
ED KONECNIK
Flushing, N.Y.
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