WINNEMUCCA - Last year I heard for the first time a 1961 address by Ronald Reagan to the AMA in opposition to socialized medicine and warning at some future date in our waning years we may be telling our children and grandchildren what it was like to be free.
Mitt Romney this year said 47 percent of the electorate pays no income tax and may not vote for him. True! This is that future date. No longer are we free, but also much, much more ignorant.
President Obama pits the have-nots against the haves by saying he will raise taxes on the haves to redistribute to the have-nots. So just who is free today? Those who subsist on a government welfare check to live are not. The mother with children without a father to support them and depends on government subsistence to raise them is not free. Those who willingly accept food stamps depend on the government to eat and are not free. Those without jobs depend on a government check while unemployed are not free. Those workers not earning enough to pay income taxes in some cases still receive rebates from the government. Parents who have willingly accepted government schools feeding their children, and indoctrinating but not educating them, do not seem to know the meaning of liberty. Then those same children walk the road of dependency with college loans and grants. And just how free are small businessmen facing reams of regulations? How much of our free time do we give up filling out income tax forms?
And Social security and Medicare recipients? We are more dependent than all, and seem to be the most ignorant. Social Security, being just a tax, most of us paid it. Even though it is now either paid to us by taxing others or selling treasury bonds, we feel entitled and depend on the checks. We have no choice for medical insurance. We have to accept Medicare. Not only that, the doctor has to accept whatever payment Medicare grants him, and the government prohibits us from paying him any additional. He is not free either; his only choice is not to accept us as patients. As old as we are, we seem to have forgotten how cheaper doctor bills were when we paid him directly.
Even the super rich and big businesses look to government for favors. None of us has economic freedom. And if we also have forgotten our history, since 1914 every one of those dollars is backed only by hot air. The supply is inflated or deflated solely on the whim of the government.
I care not that Mitt Romney is not perfect; he is a capitalist. I recognized Barack Obama as a collectivist in 2008. Collectivism creates misery and poverty. Capitalism with free markets creates economic freedom and prosperity.
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