TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Geithner and “Progressives” Favor Expanded Involuntary Servitude

Posted by Ari Armstrong at 4:12 pm ET

The Founders did not say that Americans have the “privilege” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the Founders recognized that Americans have an inalienable right to those things.

Yet Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner claims the federal government should forcibly confiscate more wealth from some citizens, as this is properly their “burden” for “the privilege of being an American.”

At least Geithner’s statement is clarifying. It shows that the welfare state that he and his “Progressive” brethren endorse—consisting of massive forced wealth transfers from those who earn wealth to those who don’t—is incompatible with individual rights and is, in principle, a system of involuntary servitude and, ultimately, slavery.

As Ayn Rand observed, “Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.”

Appallingly, we already have a system of involuntary servitude. Geithner and company want to expand it.

What does that make them? What would it make you?

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Posted in: Individual Rights and Law

Comments are welcome so long as they are civil.
  • Anonymous

    It makes them “masters”, and me, a slave”.  But these two terms are euphemistic, derivitive terms, like, in such a context, the terms “law” and “government”, all covering up the real, essential relationship: criminals and victims, under criminal plans and a criminal mob.  Unless the public and our “leaders” sufficiently wise up, sooner or later, the time will come when we’ll have to say that out loud, in public.