It’s quite unfortunate indeed that the political left’s long con of turning a constitutional republic based on individual rights into a socialist democracy is actually working. I, for one, don’t give a damn what “the people” want when it comes to their desire to plunder my property to fund their consumption. Such ne’er-do-wells deserve to be run off of our respective front porches with shotguns, not treated as if they have a legitimate claim to what others have earned.
I would very much love to see the Idaho Legislature repeal Medicaid expansion. For that matter, I would love to see the Legislature repeal Medicaid altogether along with the indigent fund and the rest of the redistributive entitlement programs which have taken root here in Idaho. It has been five centuries since Captain John Smith saved a struggling Jamestown by declaring that “He that shall not work, shall not eat” and implementing a system based on ownership and profit, yet the allure of perpetual indolence remains strong—particularly to those who embrace the debauchery of socialism.
We see this disturbing trend in the ascension of presidential candidates offering a “universal basic income” funded by a shrinking minority of producers to an ever-growing horde of idle consumers. We see it in the unprecedented growth of the federal welfare state, the budget of which has ballooned from nothing to more than $2.5 trillion annually in less than a century. We see it right here in Idaho, in the vote to expand Medicaid where more than 365,000 Idahoans abandoned principle in the name of plundering their neighbors.
This country was built on a foundation of individual rights and that includes property rights. It has long been understood that one man’s misfortune did not entitle him to the property of another. As a congressman from Tennessee, the famed Davy Crockett successfully killed a charitable spending proposal by explaining that “We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”
This country has lost its way, and Medicaid expansion is an excellent example of the dark path on which it finds itself today. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, leaving everyone worse off than they would have otherwise been, yet many Americans seem determined to suffer this same fate rather than to learn from the costly mistakes of others. How sad for them and how much sadder for those of us who can see the looming disaster but whose council repeatedly goes unheeded. We have warned you time and time again, America. The impending catastrophe is on your heads. We have done all we could.
