Self-Reliance Is A Moral Imperative

     I recall back in the good old days when government-run health care was just a twinkle in the eye of Barack Obama and the millions of Progressives looking to government to wipe their sorry noses for them. I remember seeing a bumper sticker that read, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it is free." No truer words were ever spoken or written as Americans begin to find out just how crushingly expensive ObamaCare is.
     But beyond the gargantuan waste of 620 million hard-earned taxpayer dollars for a web site that does not work. And beyond a health care reform law that increases Americans insurance premiums, some as much as by a factor of two or more. And beyond the same law which raises health care deductibles for most Americans into a stratosphere where health insurance is rendered useless. And beyond the cold hard fact that doctors and other health care providers are leaving the practice of medicine, running away from ObamaCare regulations like a child running from a swarm of bees. And beyond the mass exodus by doctors and other health care providers resulting in a reduction of supply while exponentially increasing demand, causing cataclysmic rationing to be the only outcome. Beyond all of these things and more is the core difference between Conservatives and Leftists, which determines the direction of a society towards moral prosperity or corrupt dependence, that core difference being self-reliance.
     Even as far back as Biblical times, the moral imperative of self-reliance to the continuation of a thriving culture was acknowledged and encouraged. When members of a society have things provided for them by other members of that society by the force of a governing body, that society is depleted, not only of wealth but of morality. The very moral act of helping a neighbor in need is corrupted by the heavy hand of government taking from those who have and giving to those who have not. If a man sees a neighbor who is in need of food and he gives him half of his own, the benefactor feels good about being able to help someone in need and the beneficiary feels grate-full at being helped. But when government takes from the man who has and gives to the man who has not, the benefactor feels angry and bitter and the beneficiary feels entitled. All morality is removed from the act.
     Beyond the moral depletion of a society, wealth is depleted because the cost of free health care, free housing, free food, free cell phones, free air conditioners, free car repair, free utilities, and myriad other things which are provided to citizens by the confiscated wealth of their fellow citizens, results in less prosperity for the society in general. This is the basic economic lesson that those on the Left do not seem to understand, i.e., nothing is free and the cost is borne by someone, somewhere, and somehow. When this poverty spiral reaches a point where there are two many persons receiving the benefits that too few persons are providing, rationing or bankruptcy or both will occur.
     The salient and visible issue of self-reliance is of great importance as we decide as a society if we are going to allow our government to provide more and pay for it with redistribution, ObamaCare being the largest redistribution scheme in history, the major portion of the cost being borne by young, healthy citizens. Or if we are going to return to the morality of self-reliance and reinstate the greatness that defines the United States of America.