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Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You…

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

President Kennedy’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” has been admired and repeated by many.  However, given current circumstances in which so many people --  rich, poor, and middle class, depend upon the government, it is time to update that phrase.  Today, people need to be told: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for yourself.”  Americans need to be reminded that, in order to be a free people, and to live in a society that respects every individual, we must be self-governing, independent, and largely self-reliant.

Since President Kennedy died, instead of taking his advice, we have done just the opposite.  We have been asking our government to do more and more for us, forgetting that government cannot give us anything that it does not first take away from us.  Unfortunately, as we ask more and more from our government, we are all becoming enslaved by it, so that either we are forcibly plundered by the government in order to provide resources to support the welfare state, or we become beggars, kneeling before the government agents and pleading for their help. 

Most of us, members of the middle class, have become both the plundered and the beggars – enslaved in both directions!  We are highly taxed to support this welfare state, leaving us few resources to take care of ourselves, and, as a result, we become beggars, giving the government control over the most sensitive areas of our lives, including control over what our children are taught and control over our medical treatment.  It is very sad to see a once proud, productive, and independent people reduced to this state of enslavement and dependence; it certainly is not compassionate.

What can we do to restore our freedom, pride, and independence?  If we want to end this downward spiral that enslaves us all, we have to recognize that there is no free lunch.  Remember, government cannot give with one hand unless it first takes away with the other, and it is going to be taking from us, either directly, in the form of taxes, or indirectly, in the form of lost opportunities and higher costs. 

Next, we should agree to end corporate welfare.  For example, we should demand an end to subsidies of exports, an end to price supports and subsidized water to farmers, and an end to government subsidies for medical research for the pharmaceutical companies.  Businesses, including farmers, must compete in the free market or go out of business.  Certainly, one business should not be forced to subsidize another.

A good next step would be for us to recognize that middle class people are only cutting their own throats when they seek government handouts, because they also have to pay for those handouts.  If we think we are getting something for nothing, we are only fooling ourselves.  When middle class people ask for government handouts, such as “free education” or “free medical care”, what is really happening is that we are giving control of our resources and our lives to the government – and, in the process, we are driving up the cost of education and medical care so they become far more expensive than they were before government began supplying them for “free”.  This makes it much more difficult for us to opt out of the government-controlled programs. 

If we could agree to the foregoing steps, removing corporate welfare and removing middle class entitlements, we would go a long way toward restoring our liberty, and, in the process, we also would greatly reduce poverty, because our economy would be much stronger and would offer far more opportunities to help people improve their economic situations.

Of course, we would be much better off if we also took the step of eliminating welfare programs for the poor, relying instead on private charity.  Private charities are able to recognize the unique situation of each person and really try to help lift people out of poverty.  Private charities also operate much more efficiently than government and have an incentive to improve people’s lives, while government programs are inefficient, treat everyone the same, and have a perverse incentive to keep people in poverty. 

So, the next time a politician tries to sound generous and virtuous when he is offering to increase the subsidies for business or education or medical care, we need to recognize that he is not a generous benefactor but rather is our slave master, offering to place more heavy chains around our necks, taking away our freedom, weighing us down, and making it much more difficult for us to take care of ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.

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