“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities and the smallest minority on earth is the individual.” – Ayn Rand

For my final column in the Fuqua Times, I will sum up the state of the American political system by asking you a provocative question… Are you a slave?  Admittedly this question sounds foolish on the surface. We all have relative freedom to move about to different states and work different jobs.  We are not slaves in the sense that the blacks in the South were slaves, but I would contend that in a very real sense we are slaves to the government in all its manifestations. 

A quick Google search will result in numerous results for slaves who simply paid their masters a sum every month and were otherwise free to seek their own employment and keep the difference.  Are we that different?  For those of you who will be making more than $200,000 in New York (which as a good capitalist I hope is a lot of you), your marginal tax rate will be 62.2% after Mr. Obama’s coming income and payroll tax increases. Oh, by the way, that does not include road tolls, sales, property, alcohol, tobacco, phone, gas, or corporate taxes! If slavery is when one man owns another’s labor, does not the government owning 60% of your labor make you 60% enslaved?

Well certainly if we give up control of that much of our money, we can pretty much act as we please as long as we don’t hurt other people right?  Oh no, we are also regulated to an extent that that almost no facet of human life is left unmarred by government intrusion.  The costs to Americans of complying with government’s rules amount to some $2 Trillion per year (nearly $7,000 per citizen).  It is so bad that if you wanted to read the legislation that is imposed on us annually, it would be a full time job for a third of the year.

How did a nation of people who rebelled against Britain over the equivalent of a 3% tax rate end up surrendering so much of our financial and personal liberty to ever-growing beasts in Washington, Raleigh, Albany and elsewhere?  There are a number of answers, but one of them is the human tendency to not care about what does not directly affect us.  Government is very good at denying the rights of a small group of people, knowing that the rest of us will not care, or will even be cheerleaders.  Democrats have used the force of government to deny property rights of smokers.  The 80% of people who don’t smoke will not stand up for the rights of those who do smoke to do so even on their own property, will they?  If you can’t decide for yourself what to do with your property, do you really own it?  Republicans are just as guilty.  They love to demonize and borderline persecute illegal immigrants as criminals.  Never mind that immigrants are just responding to market forces while providing incredibly valuable services for our economy, it’s just too easy to rile up people by telling them “the Mexicans are screwing you”.  In some sense the whole problem reminds me of what Father Niemoller said about the Nazis, if you will not stand up when the government comes for the smokers, Mexicans, Muslims, Mormons, or AIG employees, who will be left to stand up for you?

Another tool the government uses to divide and enslave us is to first insert itself “benevolently” in a situation and then use its interest in that facet of our life to control that situation.  One example of this is education.  Every child in this country is forced to receive “FREE!” education at the hands of the government.  We spend an incredible $10,000 as a society in subsidizing this.  While I do not doubt the good intentions of those who 100 years ago wanted to give poor kids a chance, the schools have devolved into a combination of indoctrination in what the bureaucrats want kids to know and a way to spread the influence of government unions.  When nationwide we have a 30+% dropout rate and many of those who do graduate can barely read, we need to wake up.  The government is a failure.  We let them run the system and they screwed it up. Parents know the system is horrible, and blame teachers, teachers blame parents, and though both have responsibility, the problem is the system. Our society is being destroyed by these schools. We don’t need a smarter plan, a bigger Department of Education or more “No Child Left Behind”; we simply need to eliminate government involvement. 

Similarly, at some point we allowed the government to decide what a marriage was.  This is a really odd situation.  Think about it, your marriage is an agreement between you, your spouse and the State.  People gladly accept the tax deductions, but what about divorce?  How many lives have been destroyed by a crappy custody decision by some bureaucrat in a black robe?  And does anyone really think that gay marriage would be a divisive issue if the state weren’t involved?  I’m not suggesting that militant gay activists and Pat Robertson would be best friends, but I am saying the more that governments control benefits and financial incentives, the greater the conflict between people of different ideologies.

I know most readers do not agree with these thoughts, but I do believe that we all have a point where we know the state has gone too far.  For me, that point was a long time ago, but I would urge you to think about what your limits are, and don’t back down, or these people will keep taking more and more of our lives until we’re not just 60% slaves, we’re 100% slaves.