I was immediately taken aback to see this quote from Rep Mike Pence (R-IN) in this morning’s headline article- behind a paywall- (House Cuts Spending, Regulation) in the Times-Argus:
It is morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use them to fund organizations that provide and promote abortion.
How shockingly wrong Mr Pence is. We are all, of course, free to our own opinions. That’s the supposed point of liberal democracy and Constitutionally protected freedom- you can be for against a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her body and her family and her life, you can be for or against limits in campaign contributions, you can be for or against tax-subsidies to this or that corporation or industry; you can even believe and practice whatever religious rites you want to (or don’t want to).
However, the function of the government is to take the resources (tax revenues) of the nation and provide support and services that benefit everyone, regardless of any one individual or group’s own particular belief in this, that or the other thing. Most importantly, said function should be particularly focused on providing for the needs of the most vulnerable, the least fortunate, and least able of our society. It is the government (and to be clear, I’m not a fan whatsoever of ‘the state’ but I use it in this form as the present-world function of the collective “will of the people”, as it supposedly is) which steps in to make sure the needs of the citizens are achieved.
There are any number of things which I do not like or agree with- yet my neighbors have needs which are different than mine, and if they find themselves un-able to accomplish those needs which generally provide for their own health, wellness, and prosperity than it is certainly my job (through ‘the state’) to provide for such. If my needy neighbor is left to fail and suffer, the negative impacts upon me, my family, and our own health, wellness and prosperity are exponential.
The typical conservative retort would be that it is not, in fact, the role of the government to provide things for people which they are not capable of achieving themselves; that “true democracy” is a free-for-all, a survival of the fittest sort of anarchy out in the marketplace. Such empty rhetoric is easily exposed as mere doublespeak from the mouths of the rich in their never-ending class war against the working and impoverished among us. These very same conservatives who demand government “get out of the way” are happy to enact laws which deter or prevent people from forming unions, and set rules which favor bosses over unions. These very same conservatives throw massive heaps of subsidies and “tax breaks” (giveaways) to certain industries (big agriculture, war toys, pharmaceuticals, oil-coal-nuclear) while declining to do so for others (local agriculture, clean technology, health care, clean energy).
The past 32 years, in fact 70 years, of American government as well as international governments (primarily European) show the absolute failure of the ideas of conservatism. Left free to “the market” the rich get richer while everyone else falls further and further behind. If the conservative notion of government “getting out of the way” where so right, over 250 million people across America would be left to starve, die of easily treatable and preventable health problems, and generally waste away their lives working for slave wages 80 hours a week just to try and care for their families; all while the top 10% or so of the population struggles to find ways to spend their vast and often un-imaginable fortunes. Such a “society” brings in to question why humans would biologically be social animals at all, as no other social species works for the success of the few at the detriment of the many.
No, Mr Pence, it is not morally wrong to use the resources of the people of this country to provide services to the most needy. It is morally wrong to deny such services based on part of the population’s religious (personal) opinion of right and wrong.