1/22/12 A SERF IS A SERF

LOOKS LIKE SNOW

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  20 degrees, wind SW, very light. When temperature and humidity are up after a cold spell we are bound to get snow, and the overcast sky sure looks like it.  That’s good, as it will add to the snow base for the dog sled races on February 4th and 5th.
        The Ashland Daily Press announced yesterday that Wisconsin would be receiving an additional $28 million dollars in heating assistance money from the federal government, a particularly important fact for the impoverished northern counties of the state, most of which are extremely depressed.  Nationwide, over 800 million dollars of such aid is being made available to the states.  I cringed when I read the statistics.
        Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with the rural (and urban) poor who  are having a hard time heating their homes this winter, and do not wish to see anyone go cold, or hungry (think food stamps and extended unending unemployment insurance), or poorly clothed or housed (think public assistance of many kinds, including subsidized housing and grants for insulation and thermal glazed windows).  But it has come to the point that there are government grants and subsidies to ameliorate just about any human condition and beyond ( i.e., paying almost anyone who can say “farmer” to erect fences, plastic greenhouses and  you name it). I view it all with wonder, all the time, in these economically depressed  northern counties of Wisconsin. 
        But what really astounds me, and I must admit makes me feel less charitable towards the needy among us, is that by and large these same folks also vehemently oppose a mine that would bring thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to the area; who oppose almost any effort to lift government  restrictions or reduce taxes on businesses and their neighbors; who oppose almost any change; and support radical political elements that preach punitive taxation and class warfare.
        All of us lose our independence and ultimately our freedom when we become dependent upon government for our basic needs. Most of us are descendants of immigrants who fled conditions of serfdom in Europe or Asia or South America to exist as free people in a new nation devoid of the tyrannies of the old.
         A serf is a serf, whether indentured to the nobility, an oligarchy, the church or the state.  Slavery is a terrible injustice, because an individual’s freedom has been taken away by force.  Serfdom in a way is worse, because it is essentially a social contract, entered into on a quid pro quo basis; a measure of freedom given up for a measure of largess.  The peasant is serf to the noble who protects him with castle and arms; or serf to the bishop who owns the land in the name of the church and promises heavenly rewards instead of earthly food; or serf to the dictator who promises  the rewards of ethnic or religious superiority over others; or serf to the politician who promises food stamps and heating oil in exchange for a vote.  It is all the same road, and and at the end of it there is neither freedom nor prosperity.
    Our society has determined that there should be a government role in providing an economic safety net for its citizens and that is fine as far as it goes. But when the “safety net” extends beyond the truly deserving needy and becomes  the social contract, freedom and prosperity are doomed.
        The only bar to serfdom is the personal and economic freedom of the individual.  And the primary role of democratic government is to be the guarantor of those freedoms, not the ensnarer of the unwary onto the dole.