Give and Take.

 Robin Hood was on shaky ground my friends. A childhood hero, champion of the downtrodden and oppressed..  In order to give, you must first have something to give, and you must acquire that from somewhere... how you acquire that resource is key...

The government can't give anything to the people without first taking from them.  The only revenue stream which a government has is its power to tax(take) from the people. Whenever the government gives out more it must take more.  Since the government does not produce anything it is by definition a "looter" as Ayn Rand details in Atlas Shrugged. 

A good friend wrote yesterday this powerful quote:

"The size of the government correlates directly with the complacency of the church, not the institutionalized church but rather me and you." Melanie Yenovkian

I am not crazy. I recognize that we need protections, and regulations to protect.  When we become complacent and "forget" our obligation of brotherhood to our neighbors and family.. When we try to outsource benevolence.. We enter into a death spiral.  In the past half century, we the people have attempted to pay into a pool of social justice rather than take on the individual burden of helping those most directly in front of us.  We have tried to rely on the government and our churches to "do the work" of charity.  We have stopped providing on our own.. because the "collective" can do so much more.. This is what I was taught.  Only by pooling our resources can we make a difference. I posit that it is not true my friends.

The critical flaw is exposed to the light when you ask someone to provide for others who cannot even provide for themselves. We all know that this cannot work in the end.

Remember my friends. Whenever you take from the government, you should be bound by honor and duty to give back far more than you have received. The responsibility for taking from one to give to another is fraught with peril and laced with corruption. The ends cannot justify the means, when the means were derived from the ends... If the looter is both the taker and the giver.. the source of the benevolence/resource must be somewhere else..

We as a people watched as Bernie Madoff took from some and gave to others.. We reviled and ridiculed him.. We labeled his actions, stealing, a ponzi scheme.. a travesty of justice.. Would it have been okay if Bernie had simply given all of his vast wealth to the poor and done the world a service?  What if he had stolen from the rich and given to the poor?