Freedom Flyer 29

Social programs are not what define Canada.

In his diatribe against government cutbacks, When vandals get elected (Nov. 4), Jeffrey Schlemmer argues that Canada's social system is, "more than any other characteristic, (what) uniquely defines us as Canadians."

This belief is an insult to our heritage as a free people. The values of freedom (individualism, individual rights, responsibility, choice, voluntarism, and reason) define my Canada. The relative values of socialism (collectivism, group rights, dependency, force, relativism, and mysticism) have almost destroyed Canada, and may yet. We are all witnessing the process - and being forced to participate in it.

We allowed our freedom to be eroded by unscrupulous people who have abused our love and charity. We have surrendered to them the responsibility of judging right from wrong and now we are facing the consequences.

Huge government bureaucracies, ministries and grants have produced a whole class of people who live off funds provided (by us!) to support them and their advocacy on behalf of their victims. That's where Schlemmer comes in. A lawyer specializing in welfare law. I can well understand his interest in the "human impact" of government cutbacks.

But he is not alone. Schlemmer, Susan Eagle, Megan Walker, Julie Lee, Marion Boyd, and literally hundreds of others, such as John Clarke, Buzz Hargrove, Bob Rae, all want to convince us that welfare cutbacks are a bad thing. They're wrong. Cuts are a good thing, and should proceed even more quickly. Funding poverty through government is a bad idea. It's not charity. But it is big money for those who can cash in on a system that promotes, not reduces, poverty at our expense. Our forebears did not fight for that. They fought for freedom, and.cared for the truly disadvantaged. I hardly think they would have applied that term to the likes of welfare recipients such as the one cited in the accompanying "welfare mother expense account." If we consider someone impoverished or destitute when they have a home, a car, RESPs and credit cards, something is wrong with our values.

When there are some who we believe may not deserve our support, we must "harden our hearts" to those who would abuse our virtues for personal gain. It's understandable that for any recipient of a benefit, cuts will always be unwelcome, while for the payer cuts can never happen fast enough.

It's a moral issue. Who has the right to decide where to spend our money? Ourselves, or others?

When we surrender our power of choice to government, we surrender our morality, and we surrender our humanity. We were not made to be sacrificial animals for each other - or to each other. We were meant to aspire to greatness.

Governments dedicated to "helping" others have produced a quite different result than the simple act of one individual helping another. They've produced people like Schlemmer. His world of special privilege (and government funding) is a world of racism, sexism and poverty, and how to make it work to your advantage.

If we are to forget the prejudices of the past then we must create a proud new culture of freedom, reason and responsibility, one that we can all share in, and one that perhaps has not existed at any time, anywhere in the world. Traditional cultural values which are negative must be abandoned. Specifically, the status quo that Schlemmer is ironically defending, must be abandoned. His ends do not justify our means.

There may still be time to escape repetition of past disasters but we must all resist the false prophets of socialism and remember our commitment to the greatest "social" virtue of all: freedom.