Producers and Consumers, Re: Freedom and Steyn

I was over at Pundit & Pundette and they've got a great list of Mark Steyn quotes up right now. I had never heard of Steyn until a few months ago when he filled in for Rush one day. He struck me as a clever, yet rambling sort of fellow with a charming accent-- and wickedly smart. Steyn has a great mind and is an enormous asset to conservatives who can't put into words exactly how they feel, his pithy and brillant quotes are what is on the tips of all conservatives tongues. Here are two which really sparked my interest:

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks – drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.

Government health care would be wrong even if it "controlled costs." It's a liberty issue. I'd rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.

Here is another in the same vein:

To live is messy but liberating: free societies enable the citizenry to fulfill their potential – to innovate, to create, to accumulate – while recognizing that some of their number will fail. But to attempt to insulate free peoples from moral hazard is debilitating and ultimately fatal.

I think this is the heart of federalism-- and the heart of America (though it is being turned into something else as we speak). Freedom is not equality in it's purest sense. Freedom allows people who may not have been given the same opportunities at birth the ability to do whatever they wish with their lives. Some people are born into well-off families in suburbia, go to college, and work in an office making a very nice living. Some people are born into middle class families, end up dropping out of highschool and start selling drugs. Some people are born into the slums, work their asses off to get scholarships to go to college, get into med school and become a cardiologist. Some people work hard all their lives, yet only attain a meager savings. This is what freedom is all about. It's all about what people choose to do with what they are given. Some poor people hate others because they were born rich and supposedly have never had to work very hard. And, lets face it, some rich people are snobs and elitists who think those with less money are lazy slobs.

It goes against human nature to try and even us all out by taking from producers and giving to consumers. You rarely make a consumer into a producer by giving him more to consume.

Frankly, I would rather be poor and broke than take handouts from the government. It would be difficult, perhaps nearly impossible, to make a living at times, but I want to be the producer, not the consumer. I don't want a tax return, I don't want bailouts, I don't want stimulus-- I want to be left alone so that I can produce and make my own living without someone always looking over my shoulder going, "oh, you're not making enough, let me give you back those taxes," or "Look at you go! I'll have to confiscate half of that, just to be fair." I don't want the government to think that I'm too stupid to save my own social security.

It's all about freedom, really. And like Mark Steyn said, freedom is messy. Life is messy. Deal with it.