Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The End Does Not Justify The Means, Nor Do His Words Support It - A Fatal Flaw

On Sunday, March 26, The Wall Street Journal published a piece by Charles Murray who is a W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.  Mr. Murray has recently published a new book titled “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State” and the WSJ graciously provided their pages as a marketing opportunity for Mr. Murray to move a few more copies of his book.

When reading the title to Mr. Murray’s book, one could be tempted to think that Mr. Murray is advocating a worthy goal, removal of the State’s hands from our various pockets and elimination of the State’s misguided attempts at wealth re-distribution via social security, medicare and welfare programs.  A portion of Mr. Murray’s words, as published in the WSJ, could also be interpreted as supporting removal of the State’s pernicious meddling in matters which should be left to the natural actions of the market, or, returned to the hands of individuals.

Mr. Murray’s proposal, though, does not, as he states at the end of this piece in the WSJ, ”...put responsibility for our lives back in our hands—ours as individuals, ours as families, and ours as communities.”  Mr. Murray’s proposal simply appears to put responsibility back into individuals’ hands, but the actual methodology suggested by Mr. Murray proves, without a doubt, that the responsibility will not be delegated to the individual, where it belongs, but will remain with the State, as the following excerpt from Mr. Murray’s “The Plan,” demonstrates:

“Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies and converting what remains into a muddle of services, subsidies, in-kind support and cash hedged with restrictions and exceptions, just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back in cash grants to all American adults.”

Back to the drawing board, Mr. Murray, your plan is fatally flawed.

The article in the WSJ is titled “A Plan to Replace the Welfare State.”

Posted by John Venlet on 03/28 at 08:00 AM
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