Safe from what? Those who would take their lives and plunder their goods? Yes. That is precisely the function of government. God has granted the state the power of the sword to punish those who assault life and property by force or fraud. It is not, however, the responsibility of the state to keep people safe from themselves. That is the responsibility of the individual. Once we embrace the seemingly benevolent notion that the state has the responsibility to protect us from ourselves we have opened the door to the worst possible tyranny. Any state that can keep a person from harming themselves has total control over that person.
It is missing the tyranny that invites the tyranny. We have grown accustomed to it. In New York City the mayor some years back tried to make it illegal to sell soft drinks in sizes larger than 16 ounces. Prohibition, of large sodas. Happily, the courts protected the citizens of New York from such overreach. That such legislation passed, however, should concern us. More recently we learned that the Biden administration has allocated $30,000,000 to programs that make smoking crack “safer.” There are three things we must not lose sight of.
First, there has been virtually utter silence from the public over this. I’d seen allusions to it on my twitter feed, but had to look it up to be sure it wasn’t clickbait. What I found is that the story is too blasé to be clickbait. No one cares. There is no sense of shame from those allocating these funds, nor is there outrage from those who might normally be opposed. In short, we’ve already embraced the tyranny.
Second, this program isn’t about helping people from accidentally and unknowingly harming themselves. It’s about helping people to harm themselves by keeping them from harming themselves worse. The whole point of the program is to reduce unintentional overdoses and infections. It reminds me of the insane reasoning that says abortion must be legal lest people get hurt in back-alley abortions. We wouldn’t want people killing their own children to be hurt would we?
Third, we have lost all sense of the numbers. $30,000,000? That’s a drop in the bucket. Only, however, if the bucket is the size of an ocean. Were you an average American wage earner and if you paid a tax rate of 50%, half of every dollar you earned, it would take you more 30 years just to pay for this one program for one year. Not a dime to national defense. Not a penny to fund the judicial system. More than half your working life to pay for one year’s worth of crack smoking safety aids. A grateful nation applauds you.
It was President Ford who said “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have.” How much more so a government that thinks it is called to give everyone what it thinks they need?