FELDSTED: The principles outlined above are equally applicable to Canada. Our governments, federal and provincial are constantly providing charity to corporations and groups at our collective expense

Politics as practiced today is all about acquiring and keeping power and control over people, not meeting their needs.

We long ago forgot that we created governments to provide the services we could not provide for ourselves as individuals or communities and to develop orderly and peaceful communities. 

Governments cannot give us anything they have not taken from us through the force of law. We are required to declare all income we receive to our government(s) and they tell us what portion they are going to confiscate.

Governments (the latest group of miscreants who managed to convince us they can do a better job of managing us) tell us what services they are going to ‘give’ us with our confiscated cash.

I am reminded of a story I read about US Congressman David Crockett and a lesson he learned about the constitution.

The following is an excerpt from that story:

"It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means.

What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government.

So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper.

You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other.

No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief.

There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life.

The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give.

The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution."        

There is profound wisdom in this statement, which was made to, not by Mr. Crockett, who was being chastised for voting for a charity bill passed by congress.

The principles outlined above are equally applicable to Canada. Our governments, federal and provincial are constantly providing charity to corporations and groups at our collective expense. Foreign aid is charity and worse, charity that helps no one in Canada.

All of them are acting well beyond their constitutional authorities and encroaching on our freedoms and rights as citizens.

The point that import tariffs hurt us all is worthy of note. They make what we buy more expensive and that hurts those with the least more than others.

So-called ‘sin taxes’ tax us for affronting the government by purchasing a bottle of wine to enjoy with dinner. The concept is as ludicrous as the concept that governments are morally superior. 

Any government can find or manufacture excuses for expanding its authority and control. We are fools for allowing them to do so. 

John Feldsted

Political Consultant & Strategist

Winnipeg, Manitoba