In the
previous posting on this subject we looked at the fundamental assumption of
socialism: that people have a right to what they need. In the modern age this has largely displaced
the traditional assumption that people have a right to the means to acquire
what they need.
While the idea
that people should be able to have what they need as a basic right sounds good, there is a
very subtle and extremely evil implication built into that assumption. We can see this best by comparing it with the
traditional assumption that people have the right to the means to acquire what
they need.
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| Someone who wants a loan to gamble is not a good credit risk. |
Obviously, the
right to the means to acquire what you need necessarily implies that you
qualify or are able to use the means correctly to attain the desired goal.
For example,
someone who wants a loan to acquire a farm is expected to be “creditworthy,”
that is, someone with “good credit” who keeps his word, will spend the money
for the purpose for which it was intended, and will repay the loan out of the
future profits of the farm once it becomes productive. If, instead, the borrower wants a loan to go
to Vegas, will buy luxury goods for his immediate pleasure, or doesn’t pay his
debts, he would not qualify for a loan, and thus does not meet the requirements
to exercise his right to the means of acquiring what he needs. He must either make himself creditworthy to
be able to exercise his right, or he must find someone willing to give him
charity.
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| Even a ditch digger should be qualified for the position. |
Similarly, a
right to work implies that you are competent to fulfill the job requirements
for the task which you have been hired to carry out. A bricklayer is expected to be able to lay
bricks. A truck driver is expected to
drive trucks. A ditch digger is expected
to dig ditches, and so on.
Now consider the
idea that people have the right to have what they need. As noted, this sounds very well, but there
are a number of “catches,” the first of which is, Who decides what someone
needs? Food, clothing, and shelter seem
obvious, but even those raise questions of how much and what kind?
Someone living in
a grass hut in the Amazon is unlikely to want or need a fur coat, while a
native of Nome, Alaska might not have a strong desire for a string bikini. Jews and Muslims would find no use for a
bacon cheeseburger, while an inhabitant of one of the hip districts of the City
of Angels might demand tofu turkey in his taco.
These are obvious
problems when dealing with distribution on the basis of need, but there is a
far more dangerous implication. Someone
else is going to make the determination what you need, and that means someone
else decides whether you need 100 or 5,000 calories per day, or whether that
heart operation is warranted in your case.
Waiting lists for
operations or even doctors’ appointments in countries with socialized medicine
are (not to exaggerate) frightening. A
standard joke about hospitals in the former Soviet bloc was that people are
dying to get in. According to anecdotal
evidence we’ve received, the Canadian healthcare system is only bearable
because the U.S. system is available as a backup for those who can’t wait years
and who are fortunate enough to have the means to pay for what they need across the border.
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| Msgr. Knox: Enthusiasm an excess of charity. |
Not by
coincidence, when it comes to allocation of scarce resources (and remember, in
economic terms everything is scarce), unpopular people, those with the
wrong politics, religious views, opinions, and so on, and so forth, tend to
find themselves at the end of the line, and finally pushed out of the queue
completely, if not “liquidated.” Think
of the trendy nightclubs where a bouncer stands at the door deciding who is “cool”
enough to enter a business legally obligated not to exclude anyone who otherwise meets the requirements for entry (not drunk, is properly dressed).
As Msgr. Ronald
Knox noted in his study of what he called “enthusiasm” (which he defined as an
excess of charity that threatens unity), to the enthusiast, such as those
demanding distribution on the basis of need, the ungodly (or the uncool, the
ugly, the smelly, those who talk funny, are smarter or dumber than you, etc.,
etc., etc.) have no rights.
They are less than human, and you can do anything to them you like.
And who are “the
ungodly”? Why, anyone with whom the
enthusiast disagrees, i.e., unpopular people, those with the wrong
politics, religious views, opinions, and so on, and so forth. These are the ones whom the enthusiast turns
into “monsters” to be eliminated from society, if only because they consume
what should go by right to those regarded as fully human. They are the useless eaters who endanger
society (and your comfort, status, or anything else) by their very existence.
Thus, as we saw
in the previous posting on the subject, “National Socialism’s inherently
contradictory social and political message . . . was only possible through the
widespread inculcation of a supernatural, quasi-mythical vision of the world
that accused Jews, communists, freemasons, foreigners and any other scapegoats
of monstrous powers and intentions.” (Kurlander, “Hitler’s Monsters,” op.
cit., 540.)
The question now
becomes how specifically this state of affairs came to be, which we will take
up in the next posting on this subject.
#30#
