232 The Social Safetynet

<p lang="en" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal;"><font color="#333333">There's an important difference between how Americans perceive the Social Safetynet & what socialists want. To Americans, if you're down on your luck, and you ask nicely, we'll provide charity as part of The Deal, but it's up to us, and we're going to put some expectations on you. Socialists, on-the-other-hand, want help to be a Right, and worse, it's your duty to provide whatever people need to survive, as defined by other people. This entirely reverses the obligation, taking liberty from the Giver & giving it to the Asker. No other liberty battleground is so important as the ideology justifying the Social Safetynet. </font></p> <p lang="en" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal;"><font color="#333333">Modern life is just too complicated for most people, and getting more so. A weakness of liberty is that it benefits the capable & competitent, but tends to let those less so slide into confusion & failure. Many people, perhaps most, are at least partially, if not completely incompetent. In times past, many employers were much more patriarchal, and assumed some of the responsibility for their employees' own lives but at the expense of their liberty. In fact, The State is often more capable of running many people's lives than they are. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that given a chance, people can take care of themselves... No, most people need a little help. In some cases, they need help in everything. How that help is provided, and what is expected in return, is what the Social Safetynet is. That's why liberty-seekers need to agree on what they're going to do, or the socialists will win & you'll be responsible for a lot more than you bargained for in The Deal.</font></p>