“Thou shalt not steal…except by majority vote.”

Gary North

Politics can be defined as the practice of using force, either direct or indirect, to compel or persuade people to live and act in a certain prescribed manner. It is deliberate manipulation, overt or covert, with the intention of increasing one’s power and/or wealth, always at the expense of someone else. It is using people for the benefit of other people.

“And the waitress is practicing politics as the businessmen slowly get stoned…”

Billy Joel, Piano Man

Or, as the sign below shows, an attempt to force others to be charitable, compassionate, and kind.

This sign advocates a tax (levy) on some people so that other people can be “helped”. What is the underlying message? That compassion for the less fortunate must be made mandatory? That love for those in need must be compelled under duress? That charity, which should start at home, actually begins at the ballot box, provided that a simple majority agree? That voluntary kindness toward those who need help is insufficient and must have the heavy hand of government to assist? In a nutshell, the sponsor of this sign is trying to reduce Christ-like behavior down to a formula, a tax rate. Goodness and generosity is no longer a personal virtue, but has become a matter of opening your wallet at the behest of the taxman.

The really sad thing about all this is that many will fall for it and the measure has a good chance of being enacted into law. This is a blatant example of guilt manipulation and those who believe they have a right to the wealth of others will have no problem working to make this happen. A majority vote would ostensibly take unworthy creatures and make them into virtuous human beings, all done under the force of democratic law and the threat of forceful violence.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

C. S. Lewis

Well, hey, at least I do not live in Missoula, so that will not affect me. Right? Right, until the same bad attitude wrapped in an attractive package comes to my own home town.