FAIR SHARE—MAOISM IN AMERICA?

Posted on May 28, 2012 by

Let’s look back to the Cultural Revolution—when Mao Zedung’s thought was in full political force in China.  Here are pure examples of Maoism from the 1966 Chinese Communist People’s Daily.[i]

“For the past several years a dark wind-anti-Party, anti-socialism, and anti-Mao Tse Tung’s thought has been raised by class enemies . . . loudly championing the decadent way of life of the exploiting classes, making a big to-do out of women’s coiffures with their shameless ‘long hair becomes a woman’ . . .  This wind has even reached our own hairdressing enterprise . . .  Chairman Mao sounded the warning note at the Party’s 8th All China Conference: ‘We must never forget class struggle!’  I studied Chairman Mao’s teachings on classes and class struggle very conscientiously, and it opened my eyes to the fact that the bourgeoisie was using weird hairdos to wrest the masses and the younger generation from us.  This was their mad attack on us proletariat—class struggle with coexisting hair styles.  Frantically doing the weird styles, and thus advertising the bourgeois way of life, our service industry was becoming a tool in the ‘service’ of reviving capitalism!  Being a Party member and the leader of the shop, I certainly could not allow anything bourgeois to get out of hand.  I got the hairdressers to study together the works of Chairman Mao, strengthen their conception of class struggle, and stand together against doing weird hairdos . . . We designed 10 new simple natural dignified styles which were welcomed by the masses.”

In one paragraph we learn the heart of Chairman Mao’s Marxist message: The great enemy is the bourgeoisie—those who manage businesses or obtain income from owning property.  It is their “mad attack” on the proletariat—those who earn a living by labor—that must be struggled against by the proletariat.  It is only class struggle that will permit unfettered implementation of Chairman Mao’s teachings.  Reviving capitalism is unthinkable!  In this case the battlefield is over women’s coiffures, but it exists everywhere.  Only by following Chairman Mao and strengthening the concept of class struggle could oppression by the bourgeoisie be overcome.

In China, “Enemies” of the Cultural Revolution, in order to save their very lives,[ii] had to “confess” their sins against Maoist/Marxist ideology in hopes of proving they were reformed and sided with the proletariat.  We see echoes of this in Warren Buffet’s frequent confessions that it is wrong for him to pay a lower tax rate (although astronomically more taxes) than his secretary.  By confessing that he is out of line with progressive dogma he gets acceptance from the Left—despite the fact that he is the quintessential capitalist-bourgeoisie.

Among the many enemies of Maoism was the Family.

“Thereafter I had a baby and no longer took part in social labor.  The child was fat, bringing much joy to the family, and my husband’s income was sufficient to support us.  Hence, I should be happy.  However, gradually, I felt troubled in my thinking.  I saw my comrades around me working and laboring, all busily adding bricks and tiles to the socialist mansion, while I was swamped with the child and household affairs . . . [she goes to work on a farm] . . . if one relies on one’s husband, no matter how good the material life is, the spiritual life is empty and meaningless.”

Now that is an impressive confession!  Only by leaving home and working to achieve the Party’s goals could this young mother avoid an empty and meaningless life.

“How do we understand our families?  First, we must admit the common truth that all landlords and rich peasants exploit and oppress.  Otherwise, they could not have become landlords or rich peasants . . . In order to know your family and draw a clear line from it, first, you must understand and admit that your family does exploit, has sinned and should be fought against . . . boldly disclose your parents’ unlawful talk and behavior.  .  .  .”

That is the heart of Maoism/Marxism: Anyone who is rich (the capitalist/bourgeoisie) must have exploited and oppressed.  Otherwise they couldn’t have gotten wealthy.  There is no other way to become wealthy than by exploitation.  Turn your parents in to be attacked as enemies.  If you are wealthy, you are the enemy.

This Maoist/Marxist tenet is the opposite of a free market where people provide desirable goods and services which others willingly pay for thus creating a profit, and ultimately wealth, for the providers.  The more successful you are at pleasing buyers, the more income you will get.  The free market is a sensationally successful system.  Who would have thought that after the abysmal failure of Marxism worldwide—even in its former bastions of Communist Russia and Maoist China—that it would become the foundational economic principle for the re-election campaign of a U.S. President?  Certainly the President and his fellow ideologues do not advocate the violent overthrow of the government nor the devastating evils practiced by Communist governments elsewhere.  But when you hear the statement that it not “fair” for anyone to have more wealth than others, that being rich only comes through exploitation, you might ask: “Am I listening to a Marxist—who, ultimately, is anti-family,[iii] anti-religion,[iv] and anti-free market?”

[i]  People’s Daily, August 14, 1966

[ii] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution: “Millions of people in China were violently persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Those . . . coming from a suspect class (including those related to former landlords or rich peasants) were subject to beating, imprisonment, rape, torture, sustained and systematic harassment and abuse, seizure of property, denial of medical attention, and erasure of social identity. At least hundreds of thousands of people were murdered, starved, or worked to death.”

[iii] Id.  “Slogans such as ‘Parents may love me, but not as much as Chairman Mao’ were common.”

[iv] Id.  “Marxist-Leninist ideology was opposed to religion, and people were told to become atheists from the early days of Communist rule.  During the Destruction of Four Olds campaign, religious affairs of all types were discouraged by Red Guards, and practitioners persecuted. Temples, churches, mosques, monasteries, and cemeteries were closed down and sometimes converted to other uses, looted, and destroyed.”

Posted in Defending Freedom, Unfair Taxation | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

FREEDOM TO FAIL

Posted on March 26, 2012 by

Famous mountaineer, George Mallory, chose to climb Mt. Everest in the 1920’s and died in the attempt.  He was free to make that choice and suffered the results.  His widowed wife and family suffered from his loss.  If others had prevented him from trying such an adventure, they would have been curtailing his freedom.  True freedom brings with it the possibility of failure.  True freedom includes the Freedom to Fail.  The great heroic deeds of history—daring risks against great odds—are testimonials to those willing to risk failure to win great goals.  The true triumph is because they did not fail when they could have.

There is a great cost to such freedom.  We do not regret so deeply when individuals suffer from their own bad choices because we recognize it is proof of their freedom—a most prized characteristic of a free people.  But we regret profoundly when the bad—even evil—choices of some cause suffering and tragedy to others.  An extreme example is when crimes are committed against innocent victims.  But more common is when parents make choices that not only ruin their lives, but create almost insurmountable barriers to the success of their children.  The parents’ freedom to choose has resulted not only in failure for themselves, but also in failure for those dependent upon them.

Entitlements are intended to eliminate failure.[i]  No matter what choices anyone makes, everyone in America is entitled to free emergency room care—regardless of whether or not they can pay for it themselves, have health insurance, are legally present in the country, or even if they deliberately caused the physical harm requiring treatment—they are all entitled to good medical care.  This entitlement eliminates the cost of their Freedom to Fail.  Actually it doesn’t eliminate the cost, it just transfers it to others.  Someone has to pay for the expensive emergency room care.  Those who pay taxes and have health insurance become victims to those who are entitled. The same is true of every other entitlement.  If everyone is entitled to a college education, then subsidies for college must be provided for all, regardless of the choices prospective students have made.  If everyone is entitled to housing, then housing must be provided regardless of how unable those receiving it are to maintain such housing.  Every entitlement is a transfer of cost from those who have failed—admittedly not always due to some particular fault; it could be unavoidable misfortune—to others.

Many entitlements are intended to insulate innocent children from the bad choices their parents have made.  Because such children have not been prepared to succeed in our very competitive world and, therefore, are unable on their own to obtain the essentials for a decent life, we as a society choose to give them entitlements to compensate.  It is a good investment if those children eventually become self-supporting and end their need for entitlements.  It is a failure if, generation after generation, entitlements must be continued.

Not only do free people have the Freedom to Fail, nations also have that freedom.  History is littered with nations and civilizations that have failed disastrously.  The result of a nation failing is much more catastrophic because if affects everyone.  There is no over-seeing super government granting us an entitlement to insure our nation survives and prospers.  A nation can attempt to entitle itself to unearned help by borrowing from others, but then it is really no longer free and independent.  It will exist only so long as its creditors tolerate its extravagance.  If a nation is not adequately prepared to repel invaders, or if it has an economic system that simply doesn’t work, or if it is unable to maintain civil accord and unity, it fails.  Where are the Etruscans and Aztecs today?  The freedom for each nation to choose its political and economic system carries with it the Freedom to Fail.  Who is going to provide entitlements to our government?  Who will insulate our nation from its Freedom to Fail?  Who is going to entitle us with the money to turn around our current rush toward national bankruptcy?

Our attempt to offset the personal Freedom to Fail with entitlements has had the effect of creating a population demanding entitlements to shield them from the results of their bad choices.  That unconsciously leads to the dangerously incorrect assumption that somehow our government is equally entitled to be protected from its wrong choices, from its Freedom to Fail.  Many are living under the foolish fallacy that our nation can transfer the cost of its failure to others.  But Freedom to Fail is inescapable at the national level.  There are no entitlements at the national level for America.  Wake up!  We as a nation must face the reality of our own Freedom to Fail.

[i]  By this definition, Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements.  Social Security, though flawed, attempts to return as an old age pension an equivalent of what individuals and their employers have paid into the program.  Medicare, again paid for throughout a person’s working life, is intended to be prepaid health insurance for old age.  Some will receive more back than they paid in.  (See http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/planning-to-retire/2011/01/06/will-you-get-back-your-social-security-taxes-in-retirement).  This is very different from true entitlements which simply transfer money from those who have paid to those who haven’t.

Posted in National Debt, Political Culture, Unfair Taxation | Tagged , , , , , ,

LIFE

Posted on March 19, 2012 by

You can enter the most luxurious home, with huge rooms, decorated by the most renowned interior designer, filled with plush carpets, elegant furniture, and cutting edge technology and there will still be something glaringly absent: LIFE!  You can enter a very modest home with worn-out furniture and dirty dishes in the sink, but one full of children, and there is LIFE everywhere.  The contrast is stark!  The first is sterile; the second is almost overwhelming in its abundance of LIFE.  Sometimes those fated to live in the former buy dogs or cats, fill aquariums or tend plants to provide something living.  It is a paltry substitute for a family and a home filled with LIFE.

There are many reasons beyond any individual’s control why they cannot have families—reasons of health, emotional condition, cultural norms, or finances.  Many live the most worthwhile lives without children—we do not measure George Washington’s contribution by his family.  Because of compassion those blessed with large families do not want to contrast their blessed situation to those without.  But their silence is dangerous.

The danger is illustrated perfectly in Aesop’s Fable of “Sour Grapes.”  A fox saw some luscious grapes hanging from a tree limb above his head.  After trying again and again to reach them, jumping as high as he could without success, he finally gave up and went on his way, exclaiming, “I am sure they were sour.”[i]  We hear now—in our decayed culture—the same refrain: that children and families are somehow “sour.”  When those who know, those blessed with LIFE, are convinced beyond words that they are the sweetest fruit of all.  Because so many have failed to jump high enough does not change the sweetness of the grapes.

When a baby is born there is a glow around the mother.  There is no experience to equal it.  Delivery is difficult at best.  But what success can compare with creating a new LIFE with its unlimited potential.  Never again will the new mother doubt whether or not she has achieved something worthwhile in life.  Each Mother has fulfilled the crowning function of all life in bringing forth new life.  At the deepest, even biological level of her being, she knows she has achieved a form of immortality.  It is an experience reserved for mothers that no other experience can even come close to matching.  Ask any mother.

Within hours of birth, the tiny infant—perfectly formed and glowing with new life—is nursing.  In the most compelling way, the mother knows that her child’s LIFE—that most precious LIFE—is wholly dependent upon her.  Again, there is no human experience to match it.  It is unique to motherhood.  To see her baby grow and flourish from the sustenance she provides is such a powerful proof of her own worth.  What an affirmation of her value.  It is true that millions upon millions of mothers give birth and nurse their children, from one corner of the globe to the other, but that does not detract from the miraculous wonder each time it occurs.  The fact that the sun has come up for millions upon millions of days does not lessen its magnificence.

As the baby is nourished, and loved, and learns the challenging lessons of how to eat, digest, and sleep, the parents begin that life-long, ever-changing, ever challenging, ever fulfilling relationship with their own child.  It requires sacrifice on their part from the very start.  But there is no experience like holding your own baby in your arms.  There is no experience like the baby’s first smile—when parents know the baby recognizes them and is happy because they are there.

That feeling is multiplied in a home of many children.  When the father comes home from work there are little ones rushing to greet him, hugging him around the knees and shouting for joy.  No one, anywhere, will greet a man as a good father is greeted at home.  The floor may be covered with toys, there will be school projects littered across the kitchen table, there will be constant demands for help on this or time for that, there will be arguments, even fights among siblings, but most of all there will be LIFE!  Everywhere you turn, children running, pushing, talking, singing, playing, smiling, shouting.  It becomes a whirlwind of happiness—not because everything is neat and orderly or everyone is perfectly behaved, but because it is a scene bursting with LIFE.  As the Psalmist so beautifully expressed it:  “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.  As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.  Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, . . . “(Psalms 127:3 – 5)

As children grow their parents are drawn into ballet lessons, violin recitals, homework, high school choirs, drama, and sports—that never-ending procession of activities that single adults never experience.  Parents get to relive the joys of childhood and teenage years through their children.  The LIFE of the children spills over to enrich the lives of all in the family.  You see mother surrounded by tall, handsome, and strong sons; or chatting in the kitchen, sharing the joys of homemaking with beautiful daughters.  You see father with an arm around the shoulder of his child, encouraging, advising, and warning—concerned with someone who matters more to him than himself.  It is a type of heaven on earth.  Then comes that stage when children are dating, courting, marriage and finally—like fireworks in the sky—grandchildren.  The joy is repeated, but magnified!  LIFE seen from one generation away is even more precious and rewarding—if that is possible.

The list is endless: late night talks, pillow fights, days at the beach, holiday picnics, birthday parties, graduations, even family funerals when loved ones gather together to celebrate the life of one they love—a shared love and admiration that binds the generations of a family together.  It is undeniable that raising a family demands all that the parents have to give, and more, and it is undeniable that children can sometimes cause piercing disappointment.  Families are an investment.  Like stocks, they go up and down.  But if you can hold on through the troughs, the returns are unmatched.  And how pitiful to be alone at your own funeral.

As old age comes, all success other than family fades.  What were once heralded achievements at work are unknown to a new generation.  Memorabilia from world travel, awards, even clothing is put into storage or given to charity.  Memories dim.  It seems that the memories that persist, those most deeply etched in us, are those of family—a testament to its ultimate importance.

Parents who have weathered so many years together, experienced such a depth of life, become bound inseparably.  The love that brought them together, that created LIFE in the first place, is now reinforced with the respect they have earned from year upon year of shared sacrifice and success.  It is a crowning blessing.  They both know—in their roles as mother and father—that their different, but complementary viewpoints, have been essential to the family.  They are a team, fulfilling the purest and best intent of Nature.  They have created a family and filled it with LIFE.

Many fail to achieve it.  It is the great challenge to do so.  Many, for reasons beyond their control, are unable to accomplish it.  But that doesn’t change the fact that the sweetest fruit of life is a family full of LIFE.  How tragic, how misdirected, are those who miss out on the true purpose of living because they choose not to have a family!  How sad that their own lives never experience the joys, the fulfillment, the triumph of LIFE—creating, nurturing  and rejoicing in it.  Women who substitute careers for motherhood live out their lives without LIFE.  Men who reject fatherhood never experience true adulthood.  Real men aren’t identified by their tattoos.  Real men get their children through college and protect their homes from the sleaze of a decadent culture.  Most appalling of all are those who encourage abortion—choosing death over LIFE!  Has any act ever been more repugnant to true womanhood?  The very essence of womanhood is creating and nurturing life, not snuffing it out.  Has any man failed more miserably to protect his offspring than those who sponsor abortion?  How would earlier generations—who sacrificed all to protect their posterity—judge ours?  Fortunately the future belongs entirely to those who choose LIFE!

Here’s to LIFE!  Here’s to family!  Celebrate it!  Rejoice in it!  Protect and nurture it!  Strengthen and encourage it!  That is what government is for.

[i]   http://www.aesops-fables.org.uk/aesop-fable-the-fox-and-the-grapes.htm

Posted in Defending Family, Political Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

PROMISCUITY vs. PATRIOTISM

Posted on March 12, 2012 by

Two new issues are now part of our national political discussion: the role of religion in our system of government and the role of government in our sexual lives.  The first issue has been raised repeatedly in the Republican Party debates.  We hear contenders for the highest office unabashedly discoursing on how religion has played an important role in their lives and in the nation’s history.  It is a refreshing change in a country where the bare mention of a Creator in school sends atheist parents racing to call the ACLU.  The second issue has been raised by President Obama’s mandate that contraceptives be provided to all, for free.  The icon of the need for free contraceptives is a  woman, not married, who  clearly doesn’t need contraceptives to better schedule the birth of children within a happy home.  Thus we have a national discussion of promiscuity.  There is even a faint hint—though most political commentators flee from it as they would an assassin—that promiscuity is a sin.  What a change in a country where suggesting something is sinful is harshly condemned as intolerant and silenced either by derision or persecution.

Promiscuity is “promiscuous sexual behavior” which means “not restricted to one sexual partner.”[i]  Prostitution is committing sexual acts for a fee.[ii]  The difference is that prostitutes get paid, those who are promiscuous don’t.  Promiscuity is the opposite of Fidelity—the essential foundation of Family.  The Marine Corp motto of “Semper Fidelis” = “Always Faithful” applies to Marriage and Family as much or more than it does to the Marines.  What child wants a promiscuous father?  What child wants a prostitute as a mother?   Who would claim that promiscuity contributes to happy and successful families?  We call those who aid, abet, and prosper from prostitution “pimps.”  What shall we call those who aid, abet and prosper politically from promiscuity?  Certainly they are enemies of Fidelity and Family.  You can’t be for promiscuity and Family.  They are opposites.

Does personal immorality undermine a country?  It certainly undermines Marriages and thus Families, the true foundation of any country.  These issues are not new.  In fact they resonate from ancient times when other civilizations faced the same moral decay that worries so many of us today.

In 440 A.D., witnessing the collapse of the once all-powerful Roman Empire “. . . Salvian, a priest from the region of Marseille, addressed the central and difficult questions, ‘Why has God allowed us to become weaker and more miserable than all the [Germanic Gothic] tribal peoples?  Why has he allowed us to be defeated by the barbarians, and subjected to the rule of our enemies’?”  His answer: . “‘We enjoy immodest behavior, the Goths detest it.  We avoid purity; they love it.  Fornication is considered by them to be a crime and a danger, we honour it’.”[iii]

Will failure of Families affect our nation?  One of our great modern historians, Will Durant, who along with his wife Ariel won the Pulitzer Prize for the concluding work of their 11 volume history, The Story of Civilization, reached this most remarkable conclusion about what caused the Roman Empire to fall:

“’The two greatest problems in history,’ says a brilliant scholar of our time, are ‘how to account for the rise of Rome and how to account for her fall.’ . . . A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.  The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars. . . . Biological factors were fundamental [emphasis added].  A serious decline of population appears in the West after Hadrian.  It has been questioned, but the mass importation of barbarians into the Empire . . . leaves little room for doubt. . . . So many farms had been abandoned, above all in Italy, that Pertinax offered them gratis to anyone who would till them. . . In Greece the depopulation had been going on for centuries.  In Alexandria, which had boasted of its numbers, Bishop Dionysius calculated that the population had in his time halved. . . . Only the barbarians and the Orientals were increasing, outside the Empire and within.

“What had caused this fall in population?  Above all, family limitation [emphasis added]. . . . Though branded as a crime, infanticide flourished as poverty grew.  Sexual excesses may have reduced human fertility; the avoidance or deferment of marriage had a like effect, and the making of eunuchs increased as Oriental customs flowed into the West. . . . Second only to family limitation as a cause of lessened population were the slaughters of pestilence, revolution and war. . . .The holocausts of war and revolution, and perhaps the operation of contraception, abortion, and infanticide, had a dysgenic as well as a numeric effect: the ablest men married latest, bred least, and died soonest. . . . The rapidly breeding Germans could not understand the classic culture, did not accept it, did not transmit it; the rapidly breeding Orientals were mostly of a mind to destroy that culture; the Romans, possessing it, sacrificed it to the comforts of sterility.”[iv]

How significant, and relevant, that the historian found pestilence, war, and revolution only secondary causes.  He feared contraception, abortion, infanticide undermined Rome.  Greatness was sacrificed for the “comforts of sterility.”  How up-to-date is Salvian’s description of a culture so sunk in immorality that they honored it.  How descriptive of modern Western Europe and America is Durant’s diagnosis of Rome’s fall.

That these issues are being openly discussed is a shock to those who reject any suggestion that there is such a thing as right or wrong, virtue or vice, for human conduct.  But the mockery of non-believers is no longer sufficient to silence the believers. Those who do believe that private morality undergirds public morality and claim that it was a Creator, and only a Creator, who endowed us with inalienable rights are now publicly and cheerfully upholding their beliefs.  What a hopeful change!

How beneficial it will be if the marvelous trend grows for public discussion of the role of morality—of being “Just”— and of God in establishing and maintaining America.  How wonderful if Americans learn and believe the last verse of our National Anthem as well as the first—and joyfully sing together:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

[i]  Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, eleventh edition, 2007 (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, Springfield, Massachusetts, 2007).

[ii]  See: http://prostitution.procon.org/view.background-resource.php?resourceID=764

[iii] Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 30.  His award winning history ends with “Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue for ever substantially unchanged.  They were wrong.  We would be wise not to repeat their complacency.” p. 183.

[iv]  Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1944) 665-666.

Posted in Defending Family, Freedom of Religion, Political Culture | Tagged , , , , , ,

FAIR TAXES

Posted on March 5, 2012 by

In the vigorous political debate over fair taxation Democrats complain that the rich are not paying enough in taxes.  Republicans reply that half of the country isn’t paying any income taxes at all.  So what would be a Fair Tax?  One candidate suggested a 9-9-9 tax where everyone would pay a 9% tax on income with no exceptions.  The obvious problem with that, in a country where half don’t pay any income taxes, is that the poorer half will see their income taxes jump from zero to 9%.  Should the poor be expected to pay income taxes, as would be required under any flat tax proposal?  Or should wealth be seen as an economic aberration to be eliminated by taxing the rich but not the poor, coupled with extensive federal grants for housing, education, medical care, etc. for the poor so as to redistribute that wealth more equally?

Voters need to make up their minds on these key issues, because those they elect will be enacting one version or the other of a Fair Tax.  Is a Fair Tax one where each person pays the same percentage of his or her income—as in a 10% flat tax?  Or is a Fair Tax measured by how much people are allowed to keep after they are taxed—where allowing rich people to keep too much is offensive?

Imagine a family facing the same type of debt crisis America is.[i]  The parents are retired on a modest income but own their own home.  Their oldest daughter has a great job and earns over $200,000 a year.  Their next child, a son, earns only $12,000 at a part time minimum wage job.  The third son has a decent job, earning $60,000 a year as a reporter.  Unfortunately for the family, when this third son is sent on an assignment to Monterey, Mexico, he is kidnapped.  The family is told that unless a ransom of $200,000 is promptly paid, they will never see him again.  Put yourself in the parent’s living room.  The children have rushed home to determine how they are going to deal with this demand.  Here is the conversation:

Son:  I told him it was dangerous and not to go.  It’s his own fault.  Why should we help him?

Mother: You can’t let your brother die, even if it was his bad decision.

Daughter:  I know, I know.  Can’t the government do something?

Father:  We talked to the FBI.  They said they can’t do anything in Mexico and that the Mexican government was helpless to stop kidnappings.  They suggested we pay the ransom.

Son:  Where are we going to get $200,000?  I’m broke.  I can’t even afford new tires for my car.  I’d like to help, but I can’t.  Sis, you’ve got plenty of money, can’t you pay it?

Daughter:  I’ll do anything I can.  I don’t have $200,000 but maybe my husband and I could borrow it.  We don’t have much equity in our house though.  But why should I be the only one paying?

Son: Because you’ve got the most money.  Mom and Dad are living on Social Security and Dad’s pension.

Daughter:  O.K., I’ll do whatever has to be done to save my brother.  We’re a family.  I’ll call my husband and see what we can do to scrape it up.  We’ll sell all of our investments, max out our credit cards, and borrow from friends if we have to.  What a nightmare!  We’re going to be paying this off forever.

Dad: When he gets home, maybe he can pay you back.

Daughter: Don’t count on it.  Maybe he can.  But even with his help, paying off $200,000 is going to be tough.

Mother: We’ll try to help too.  I’m so sorry we don’t have that kind of money.

Son:  Actually you do.  Sell your house and move into a small apartment.  Is having a big house more important to you than helping Sis pay the ransom?

Dad:  I guess we could do that.

Daughter:  I guess brother, because your income is so pitiful, you’re not going to help?

Son:  I would if I could, but I’m broke.  I don’t have a fancy house or car like you.  I’m barely getting by.

Daughter:  How about you, Mom and Dad?

Dad:  I don’t think we can sell our house that fast.  That’s a lot of money for us.

Daughter:  O.K.  My husband and I will come up with it.  I’m not going to let my brother be murdered.  But one thing for sure, when he gets back I’m going to tell him that none of you would lift a finger to pay the ransom.  Out of the whole family, I’m the only one who cared enough to contribute.

Son: That’s not fair.  I’d contribute but I don’t have any money.

Daughter:  I believe you.  You never have any money.  But believe me when I tell you I’m going to let your brother know you wouldn’t contribute one penny to save his life.

Mother:  Don’t start a fight.  We all want to help.  But we don’t have as much money as you do.  What would be fair?

Daughter:  I don’t think my paying all of it is fair, no matter how much money I have.  He’s your son, and your brother, too.

Dad:  She’s right.  We all need to contribute.  We’re a family.

Son:  We’ll it’s not fair to ask me to contribute as much as Sis.  She might have to sell one of her cars, but I’ll go without gas for my car.

Dad:  What if we all agree to pay 10%?  That means Sis will pay a lot more than the rest of us, but then we can at least say we helped and, given our different incomes, we all contributed the same amount.

Mom:  Does that sound fair?

Daughter:  Yes.  I don’t expect my broke brother to pay as much as I do, but if he pays the same percentage, that would be fair.  Who knows, maybe he’ll win the lottery and then his 10% will pay off the whole thing.

Mom:  We can pay 10% too.  It means things will be tight, but I couldn’t live with myself if I did nothing to save my dear son.

Son:  I can do that.  And, frankly, I would be ashamed not to help.  I love my brother as much as any of you do.

This family was facing the same problem America faced when it declared independence from England.  Where would they ever get the money to fight a war against the most powerful country in the world?  It required an overwhelming commitment.  Fortunately for us, those early Patriots were willing to make that commitment.  Just above their signatures to the Declaration of Independence they wrote:  “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

That is the great commitment!  That is the level of commitment that permitted this country to be born and to become great.  Now, however, we have so many who refuse to pledge their fortunes or even a small part of their income.  They say, “Let the rich pay.  They have more money!  Don’t expect me to help.  It’s their problem, not mine!”  That is the re-election platform of President Obama.  But it is not fair in a family and not fair in a country.  Everyone should pay something. We need a flat tax.

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