Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

13 August 2014

Big Government and Race Relations

I made the following comment in a response to an article that talked about race relations under the Obama administration:
Good race relations are based on mutual respect and ultimately, respect has to be earned.  It is not earned by those long dependent on government or by those who use the force of government to take what they want from others.  A consequence of this is that Big Government, which does make some dependent and does take values by force from many, is itself a major force creating disrespect.  Having done so, that disrespect tends to become racial disrespect if there are differences by race in the likelihood of being dependent or in that of being robbed or forced to contribute services by government.
There are many, many reasons for opposing Big Government.  The most fundamental one is that Big Government is necessarily a violator of our sovereign individual rights.  As such, Big Government shows its disrespect for every individual.  That heavy disrespect is propagated throughout a society governed by such a Big Government.  This makes it very unlikely that the people of that society will not often treat others with disrespect.  This is terribly corrosive to the good-will and the sense of benevolence with which we should be able to treat our fellow man in a free society.  The subsequent loss of good-will and respect degrades the quality of life in how we trade with others and how we live with others as neighbors.  And for the reasons I outlined in my quote above, it is very corrosive of racial relations.

It is no surprise then that racial relations have not been well-served by Obama's unrelenting commitment to Big Government.  The cancerous growth of long term unemployment benefit, food stamp, Social Security disability, Medicaid, subsidized ObamaCare, and many other programs for dependents upon the government, has created many more dependent persons, who have lost the respect of many more productive and self-reliant individuals.  The cost of these programs has placed increased burdens on those productive people and at least some of them have naturally become angry at those dependents who receive the benefits of their hard work.  It is very hard for productive people to respect unproductive people when those unproductive people show so little respect for productive people by using government as their agent to take what they want by the use of force.

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