A response to Kip Allen’s Letter to the Editor in the Daily Sun:
To the Editor,
Kip Allen in his Letter to the Editor (Daily Sun, P7) wrote: "Social justice and moral obligation are not just words but ideas that a great nation was upon"
Methinks you forgot about a couple of words – but even after adding them back in, it still would be wrong.
The operative phrases in our country’s founding was NOT "social justice" (a more nebulous term has never been created in the annals of social engineering and political tax raising) – but "equality under the law". Neither was it "moral obligation"; rather, the phrase "the freedom ability to decide for oneself and one’s family unhindered by Government" would be a far better fit.
This country was built on the singular (and still radical today) notions of individual freedom and personal sovereignty. What Kip Allen wishes to place upon us all is an overarching mechanism to force behavior according to the Progressive ideal of "social justice". The problem is when you ask for specific definitions of that term and compare that to those of "individual freedom and choice", one can tell their political acknowledge the role of freedom, and then the word "but" appears as in usage that screams out "but that it should be subservient or limited in the cause of ‘the common good’ in one fashion or another". While I agree we do have responsibilities to others, one has the innate freedom to decide for themselves whether to help or not – a voluntary and free choice of will. However, every time I see his two phrases used together, I also see their implication of "and I will make you adhere to such by force of law". And laws are not voluntary.
I am not so naive that all human behavior is such that we need no laws – unfortunately, there are those that believe that what belongs to others should be taken from them – we call those people "criminals".
Often times, there are also others that delight in forcing behaviors upon others that they would not ordinarily perform – we call those people "bullies".
And then there are people who do both – forcibly take from some to give to others and then also demand that we act in ways that are pleasing to them and not what we would chose ourselves – we call them "Progressive Politicians".