In Part 1 of ‘Shurts Accounting for Everyone’, I proposed enacting the ‘Affordable Accounting Services Act’ which would provide free accounting services to everyone who needed them.  Let me assure those who may have thought I lost my mind that I had my tongue planted firmly in my cheek while writing it.  But as with any satire, I had a point to make.

It is my intention to show you just how ubiquitous and commonplace my idea is.  In this case the ubiquitous aspect is the reasoning underlying it.  Almost every expansion of government power, from the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 to the passing of Obamacare today have exactly the same reason supporting it as my idea for ‘Shurts Accounting for Everyone.’

In the structure of my argument for ‘Shurts Accounting for Everyone,’ you will see I have discovered a ‘problem’ where a certain group of people in need can have their ‘problems’ solved by another group of people who possess the ability to solve their problem if only the government jumps in and forces it.  The method employed to force the ‘solution’ can vary widely and the groups of people involved are always different, but the essence underlying WHY the government expansion is ‘required’ is what I said above, and can be summarized in the following sentence:

The ‘strong’ must be forced to take care of the ‘weak.’

And it is not just entitlement programs such as my accounting services example that has this essential idea as its foundation but government expansion in all of its forms, from taxes to regulation to welfare programs to virtually any government program of any kind.

In my example, the strong ones are accounting professionals and the weak ones are those people who have screwed up their personal finances, but I can give you the strong and the weak for almost every government expansion of power throughout history.  Let me demonstrate.

Obamacare: Strong – health care professionals and the companies they work for.  Weak – people who either won’t or can’t afford to pay for medical care.

Sherman Anti-Trust: Strong – ultra successful businesses that typically come to dominate their markets or industries through sheer competence.  Weak – businesses in the targeted business’ industry that are not as competent or successful.

Income Tax: Strong – the wealthy, which has a constantly sliding definition.  Weak – everyone else.

SEC: Strong – investing professionals and publicly-owned companies.  Weak – people who lose money by investing in stocks.

Social Security: Strong – All people who earn their daily bread and are perfectly able and willing to plan for their futures.  Weak – people who won’t or can’t plan for their retirement.

FDA: Strong – food and drug manufacturers.  Weak – everyone who eats or takes medicine.

I could go on and on.  Try it yourself with any government agency, program, tax or regulation and you will discover the principle for yourself.  In almost all cases each one of them was created to address a supposed ‘imbalance’ between the strong and the weak in some area of our lives.

The ONLY thing different about my proposal is that it addresses a different supposed ‘imbalance’ – the one where people who screw up their lives financially could be ‘saved’ by professional accountants with the skills to help them.

The reason this is so ubiquitous is because it is the political extension of the moral philosophy that virtually every person on the planet accepts without question, the morality of Altruism.

Altruism – the basic principle that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value…which means:  the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

If you believe that being selfish is wrong and evil, and being selfless is good and virtuous, then you have accepted the above moral code and everything it implies.  And it is this universally accepted moral code underlying much of our political philosophy that continues to require that the strong be sacrificed to take care of the weak.

As I will demonstrate in Part 3, it is this moral code that must be overthrown if we are ever going to bring our government back to where it is protecting and supporting our lives instead of destroying them.

(See ‘Shurts Tennis for Everyone’ in my Shurts Tennis blog for yet another example of this political philosophy that is destroying America.)