| The Tyranny of the
Children
by Susan Shelley
Actor and director Rob Reiner wants the voters of
California to approve an extra 1.7 percent income tax on individuals who
earn over $400,000 and couples who earn over $800,000. The money would go
to fund preschool education for all children in the state in a voluntary
program that aims to raise the percentage of kids in preschool from 47 percent
to 70 percent.
Reiner cites a Rand study that purports to demonstrate
that more preschool education means fewer high school dropouts, fewer cases
of child abuse and fewer criminals.
Reiner says these high-income Californians can afford
to pay the tax, especially after their federal tax cut.
What's wrong with this argument?
Well, his facts may be wrong, because it's hard to
see how the Rand study could separate the long-term effects of preschool
from the long-term effects of having the kind of parents who care about education
enough to send their kids to preschool. But that's not the problem with the
argument.
The problem with the argument is that it makes your
freedom vanish in a cloud of baby powder.
Think that's overstated? Follow along.
Children need preschool. Their parents can't or won't
pay for it. The government finds people who can easily pay for it and uses
the force of government to make them pay for it.
And then what about health care? And housing? And college?
And what's that tugging on your sleeve? It's one of
the Clintons, reminding you that about a billion people around the world
live on about a dollar a day.
People have needs. The question is, do they have a
right to other people's money?
If you think the government only picks the padded pockets
of the rich, think again. The U.S. tax code provides "child tax credits"
for people with young children, which means people without young children
pay higher taxes, even if they earn the same or less. Why? Because the government
thinks people with children need the money they earn, and people who don't
have children, well, don't.
Or maybe it's because people with young children fall
into the category of uncommitted swing voters, and politicians find it expedient
to pander to them with money that was earned by somebody else.
If need is a license to take money from other people,
then everything you have is subject to confiscation by people who need it
more. You are enslaved to the needs of people you don't know and have no
control over. No matter what decisions they make in their lives, their needs
have first claim on your efforts.
Of course, political pragmatism and biannual elections
will prevent the government from taking much more than you will tolerate.
But wherever you draw the line, you will be called selfish and uncaring and
you will be blamed for the suffering of other people's children, or, as the
government calls them, "our children."
The framers of the U.S. Constitution didn't talk about
needs or children. They were greatly influenced by eighteenth century English
legal scholar Sir William Blackstone, who wrote that the absolute rights
of Englishmen were life, liberty and property. He said a man has the right
to his life and limbs, the right to move freely from place to place, and
the right to own and enjoy his property.
Freedom is not about schools, or hospitals, or day
care centers. Totalitarian states have all those things, and people swim
through shark-infested waters to get away from them.
Freedom means the right to live your life and enjoy
the fruits of your own efforts. Think twice before you give it up, in the
name of the children or anything else.
April 20,
2005
Editor's Note: Mr. Reiner's proposal went before
the voters of California on June 6, 2006. It was defeated by a margin
of 61 percent to 39 percent. |
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© Copyright 2005 by Susan
Shelley
Source Notes:
On Blackstone's Fundamental Rights:
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England pp. 129, 134,
138 (1765-1769), cited in Raoul Berger, Government by Judiciary: The
Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Second Edition [paperback]
pp. 30-31 (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 1997).
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