Socialists, collectivists and indeed ...

My dear Midas,

I have noted, over the years, that socialists, collectivists and statists of all stripes tend to use a very effective, formulaic mechanism to get other people to agree with them. They trot out an unfortunate fellow, down on his luck, or who has just “made a mistake”, or who “was in the wrong place at the wrong time”. They then prevail on the underlying good nature of their fellow men to “help” this person, by supplying him with what he needs to “overcome” this misfortune. Lots of promises are made about how this is only “fair”, and how it is only “temporary”, and how YOU would want the same thing if YOU were in his shoes, and so how can you refuse HIM?

“Put yourself in his position,” they say, “and you can see that what we are suggesting is perfectly reasonable.”

Unemployment payments. Medicare. Medicaid. Food stamps. Aid to Families with Dependent Children. No Child Left Behind. No Somali Left Behind. No Iraqi Warlord Left Behind. All perfectly reasonable programs. Really.

And the reason that all these ideas about how to take your money, and spend it, whether you actually want to or not, are even the tiniest little bit palatable, is a bit of obfuscation they throw in with it.

“It isn't for US!” they say. “God forBID! We don't want this money for ourSELVES! We are just thinking of OTHERS. We would NEVER, EVER want it just for ourselves.”

This little tactic is very confusing to most people. But it is very easy to see through.

You see, the socialists/collectivists/statists really don't want the money. They only want what it can get them. Namely, power. They know that with THAT, they can get whatever money they want.


Oh, sure, some of them really ARE just muddle-headed, tree-hugging, good-natured boobs. Heck, I would suspect that a majority of the members of the US Congress fall into this category. They get their kicks picking up drunks off the street at 1:00 am and trundling them off to the half-way house. They get a warm and fuzzy feeling from believing that they are somehow, in some ersatz way, finally showing their drunk father that they love him by saving him from freezing to death.

I didn't say that.

These folks are not really all that dangerous, except in their excess of stupidity and their obvious enabling behavior.

The others, though, are the problem. They are not stupid. They have what we physicians would call “occult envy”. No, that doesn't mean they want to be witches. It means that their envy is hidden, concealed, and well camouflaged. They envy something else. They envy the ability to push you around.

In order to assuage this envy, they come up with an idea which makes you do what they want, without seeming, directly, to benefit from it. After all, they aren't taking food stamps themselves. But they ARE getting – again, one of those medical/psychiatric terms - “secondary gain”. It is their idea, and they are large, and in charge. They are the Man-With-A-Badge. They have a good idea, and you are supporting it, by golly, whether you want to or not, because they know what is good for you.

So the next time you hear some politician proposing to “help” somebody, or “provide a safety net”, or “give a helping hand”, or “prevent early learning disabilities”, or “stop the economic collapse”, or "improve food safety", or "provide mosquito control", or "provide community art", or "require inspections of all sanitary napkin dispensers", or (fill in the blank), ask yourself two questions.

“If this is such a good idea, wouldn't somebody already be providing the service?" (the market is amazingly able to fulfill wants and needs)

And, "If this is such a good idea, that this politician supports so much, why doesn't he just spend his own money on it, and make it happen? Or maybe he could get donations! Why does he have to forcibly take my money for it?”

Epimenides