Dumbed-down version here:

The right to work, for example, is fundamentally different from the right (entitlement) to a job; the right to marry does not entitle me to a spouse; the right to free speech does not entitle me to an audience.

Whole thing here, which I really, really recommend, especially for those of you who want to get the historical basis and, moreover, hear a contemporary defense (via Cass Sunstein… blech).

H/T: Hit & Run

On the subject, Rhode Island’s free market think tank, the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, wrote one of the best op-eds I’ve read in the last month or so. Entitled Freedom is the Cost of Social Justice, I’ll excerpt it liberally:

Ayn Rand once said that the difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. It appears that that time is now in many parts of the world. London decides who is worthy of [health] care and Canada holds its market captive like America holds the poor in public schools. Oppression sells its wares under the guise of “social justice” that demands that state’s safety net instead become society’s fabric. Once people become dependent, individual freedom is lost.

So, when Governor Caricieri announced that some of our tax dollars would be used to discourage out of wedlock childbirths and promote marriage, the reception was less than homey. Government isn’t supposed to help people make choices, it is simply supposed to write them checks.

But for those of us who truly relish freedom – this is indeed a perplexing situation. It is beyond debate that two biological parents is the preferred environment for a child. But does government have the authority to influence lifestyle, or, dare I say, “moral” choices? The governor’s response was the only logical statement anyone might accept: ‘if taxpayers must pay for other people’s lifestyle choices, we have the right to influence those choices.’

In a market driven social service world, people put their money with groups representing the values they support. Secular or not, donations were a way for people to “make the world a better place” in a manner these donors found worthy. But it’s not like that anymore, at least not in RI.

Rhode Islanders like to say they are compassionate, but that compassion isn’t voluntary. In 2005 the Catalog of Philanthropy released a report called the Generosity Index that ranked states on their “giving.” Rhode Island ranked second lowest in the nation on the amount of money donated to charity according to itemized deductions. During that same year, RI spending on public assistance programs was the third highest in the country. And this is nothing new. Our “giving rank” from 1997 to 2004 (most recent year reported) was either 49th or 50th.

So now that we have developed a system that dictates a high level of government enforced charity, whose morals will we use to administer it? Even if the proceeds are derived by coercion and government charity is given without condition, this itself is a value system that sends serious economic and moral signals. Rather than representing the absence of judgment, the evaporation of stigma within our politically-correct, amoral government welfare state is a choice of values….

Society can strike a balance between the Scarlet Letter and Murphy Brown. It is far better that this dynamic process takes place without the fear the government will pick the winner. Instead competing value systems can exist simultaneously and their successes and failures can inform one another. The best deal we can possibly hope for is for government to recede a bit, making space for private action to strengthen the fabric of society with the safety net remaining just that. But if society does continue government administered charity, you must accept a little totalitarianism. Me, I prefer freedomism.

Intimidating to say the least.

Yesterday, Stanley Kurtz at National Review wrote an excellent article on the organization, and moreover, Obama’s relation to it. I’ll except it at length below:

…Acorn is the key modern successor of the radical 1960’s “New Left,” with a “1960’s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism” to match. Acorn, says Stern, grew out of “one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.” In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide.

…Acorn’s new goals are municipal “living wage” laws targeting “big-box” stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks — efforts styled as combating “predatory lending.” Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, Acorn’s living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. Acorn’s opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown.

…According to Stern, Acorn’s radical agenda sometimes shifts toward “undisguised authoritarian socialism.” Fully aware of its living-wage campaign’s tendency to drive businesses out of cities, Acorn hopes to force companies that want to move to obtain “exit visas.” “How much longer before Acorn calls for exit visas for wealthy or middle-class individuals before they can leave a city?” asks Stern, adding, “This is the road to serfdom indeed.”

…What has Barack Obama got to do with all this? Plenty. Let’s begin with Obama’s pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago. Few people have a clear idea of just what a “community organizer” does. A Los Angeles Times piece on Obama’s early Chicago days opens with the touching story of his efforts to build a partnership with Chicago’s “Friends of the Parks,” so that parents in a blighted neighborhood could have an inviting spot for their kids to play. This is the image of Obama’s organizing we’re supposed to hold.

…The shame of it is that when the L. A. Times returned to Obama’s stomping grounds, it found the park he’d helped renovate reclaimed by drug dealers and thugs. The community organizer strategy may generate feel-good moments and best-selling books, but I suspect a Wal-Mart as the seed-bed of a larger shopping complex would have done far more to save the neighborhood where Obama worked to organize in the “progressive” fashion. Unfortunately, Obama’s Acorn cronies have blocked that solution.

To check out the entire article, click here.

However, in the last week, I’ve randomly come across some items-articles, blogs-that dispute this positive association.

Big ups to Subtle as a Sledgehammer for sending me this link, an NPR article with an excellent excerpt from Ron Paul’s bestselling The Revolution: A Manifesto (which I will in turn pathetically excerpt) in which he briefly critiques the ‘Contract’:

a toothless, soporific agenda called the Contract with America that was boldly touted as a major overhaul of the federal government. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are ever raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measures turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that if this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.

I know, not much substance but I thought I’d link to it anyway.

Tennessee Cottonmouth gets more into it, giving Newt a scathing indictment based on his reaction to Bob Barr’s presidential announcement here (copied below):

Look at the former House Speaker presuming to lecture Bob Barr on the danger a robust Libertarian Party presidential candidacy poses for Freedom and Pursuit of Happiness in America.

“Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion,” jabbered Gingrich a couple days ago in the Washington Times upon recieving word that the former Republican Barr is officially pursuing the LP nomination in Denver next week, and if successful will likely be kicking John McCain square in the musty folds of his crotch all summer long.

Let’s be clear: Newt Gingrich has never been an ally of anything or anyone remotely libertarian, and for him to even mouth an understanding of what motivates adherents of the Freedom Philosophy to believe the way they do is an act of stark profanation capable of inducing waves of emises. Newt Gingrich is a quintessential right-wing progressive interventionist who’s got a fundamental ax to grind — like the left-wing progressive interventionists he loathes culturally and admires ethically — against all things pro-individualist and anti-statist. Newt’s ideological rallying yawp, like that of John McCain and, indeed, the Democrats, is “Subordinate Your Life and Happiness to Patriotism, Collectivism and Government’s Divination of the ‘Common Good.’”

Newt, of course, is one of the chief Republican nitwits responsible a decade or so ago for purposefully derailing the party’s mildly libertarian-leaning “Contract With America” — the electorate’s November 1994 embrace of which helped the Stupid Party roll back Democrats into the congressional minority for the first time in roughly an eon.

But as was well documented in Cato Institute budget analyst Stephen Slivinski’s “Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government,” Gingrich and his rabid band of nationalist-socialists endeavored to bring about a new millennium of Big-Government Love. For a pat on the head, a kiss on the cheek and a few pieces of political silver from fellow adultery addict Bill Clinton, Gingrich sold out, discontinued, decommissioned and dismantled the Republican Revolution — and it’s been all about expanding the abusive scope and power of federal leviathan for the GOP ever since.

To explain the title, link here…it may be a metaphorical stretch. I haven’t decided.

Firstly, I’m not sure if I made it explicit in my last post, but I was in St. Louis, Missouri all last week documenting a state-wide civil rights initiative. Pretty awesome stuff.

See! Right there to the left. Me and visual substantiation of my claim.

Anyhow, I made a video during my time there…which, should be up if not tomorrow then early next week.

Second up, coming form my current geographical location there’s a somewhat comical—actually, no,very disturbing—story today about three teens accused of digging up an old grave and stealing the skull to use as a bong. While I fully denounce such disrespect—done to the carcass of what once housed an autonomous human agent—I can’t help but mock the on-duty policeman’s report:

“(He) suggested they had actually dug up a grave in an unrelated incident and ultimately removed the head of a corpse,” Houston Police Officer Jim Adkins said. “By what he told me, they turned it into a device used to smoke marijuana, which is referred to as a bong.”

Thank you Ward Clever.

A picture of the stupid <shakes head> stupid adolescents now:

Let’s see. What else. Ah, on my way out of the bank today, I heard a 40-something customer talking to an employee about the class-action-lawsuit check he was holding. Big bucks. I’m wondering how much it was; I’m sure more than pure justice would restitute…

Moving on, I don’t know how I can claim I’m all about libertarian dance parties and not have been on top of this.

Lastly, I change my mind. I will cross into ideology:

Surrounding my St. Louis hotel I counted more than 10 unions. In like a 2 block radius. Yeah, union central.

Union yes? Eh…no thanks.

As I rode the el from work to the airport yesterday, a bum gets on the train and, after offending everyone with his odor, makes a public plea asking passengers–section by section–for some change.

‘I’m a homeless man with no job, no money, no food–nothing. Please, find it in your hearts, help me get some food–a dollar, a quarter, whatever you can.’

No response. With arms out and hands open:

‘Please, please. Folks, I’m hungry and I don’t have a job and I need to buy some soap so I can get a job. Please folks, give some money to someone who doesn’t have nothing.’

Again, no charity. So he steps it up. Dramatically falling to his knees, he cries, pleads:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you please! I’m homeless and have nothing. So I’m begging you. Look, I’m on my knees. Would a person get on his knees if he wasn’t serious? Look what you made me do. You made me get on my knees. I had to get on my knees because of you. Now you know how serious I am.’

At which point I stood up and said:

‘Bullshit! We didn’t make you get on your knees; nobody here made you do anything. Don’t try and guilt us as if we’re are the bad guys, as if we’re responsible for your situation, for your life. As if you’re the victim, as if you are entitled to charity simply because you need it, regardless of why and how.’

Except that I didn’t say that and, instead, just rolled my eyes as four or five individuals offered the bum some money, a buck here, some change there.

There are many reasons not to blindly give out handouts. Perpetuating dependency and feeding the psychology of entitlement are good ones.

With that said, here’s a section of John Stossel’s now-classic 20/20 special “Freeloaders”.

[youtube]4teq7aKTNJ4[/youtube]

First one to figure out what my title is a take-off of is…