RALEIGH – On Wednesday, state lawmakers and the rest of the General Assembly crowd in the state capital were treated to dueling outdoor rallies.
In front of the Legislative Building, a gathering of day care workers, parents, children, and others rallied in defense of the Smart Start program, which some lawmakers would like to trim back to help balance the state budget (see here). On the other side in the building, on the Halifax Mall, some 500 taxpayer activists from across North Carolina convened under the tent of North Carolina Citizens for a Sound Economy to demand fiscal responsibility from state officials and protest encroachments on their freedom (see Paul Chesser’s story nearby).
The two events have some superficial similarities. Both involved real North Carolinians, hundreds of them, coming to their elected officials to make their voices heard. Both attracted the news media, curious lawmakers, and legislative staffers and lobbyists looking for refreshment.
But the fundamental messages couldn’t have been more different. At the Smart Start rally, the point of the exercise was to demand more money from taxpayers. At the CSE event, the theme was to let taxpayers keep more of their own money.
Some would argue that the pro-taxpayer position is morally suspect. After all, shouldn’t people who have more feel a responsibility to the less fortunate? Isn’t it greedy to protect your own money at the expense of public services to children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations?
I’ve heard many make this argument over the years, and you can tell they passionately believe in what they are saying. Unfortunately, it reflects muddy thinking at best. Yes, people should feel a moral responsibility to help others. But government cannot satisfy that moral sense. Government doesn’t ask you whether you want to help someone. It doesn’t allow for choice at all, being compulsory, and thus philosophically one could argue that it doesn’t allow for morality at all (forcing one to commit a moral act is to deny one the ability to be moral).
Moreover, if the word “greed” is to have any useful meaning at all in a world of personal possessions, it must refer to the illegitimate desire to take someone else’s money. It can’t refer to the desire to keep more of what you have already earned. To suggest that such sentiments are greedy is to suggest that a robbery victim is greedy for not cheerfully handing over his wallet to a gunman.
It was the Smart Start folks, not the CSE members, who were being greedy. They were demanding that the state confiscate more of taxpayers’ hard-earned money and give it to day care operators and other service providers. The CSE event, on the other hand, revolved around the notion that people ought to be left alone to enjoy the fruits of their own labors and pursue their own dreams in a free society. It was a moment of moral clarity.