The debate should be about how to reduce the size of government and the extent of domestic and international welfare that tax payers are forced to support. This was alluded to, if one can call it that:

• The suggestion that the legions of IRS and tax preparer employees tied up in non-productive activity would be forced to seek productive employment elsewhere (the word parasitic was even used!);
• The naive conclusion that a generation growing up face-to-face with the costs of government with every transaction they make will become individually minded adults who will reduce the size of government.

It’s strange. Some of our representatives have actually been productive before their term/s in DC, yet they don’t have the sense to understand that hardship and unhappiness do not lead to rational thought. It is only ideas, encompassed in a rational philosophy, that will lead to a general move to restrict government to it’s proper roles. That the debate is about whose head the IRS gun will be pointed at instead of how to remove the gun indicates clearly that rationality is not a characteristic of our representatives nor the voters who sent them there. That they put forward a sales tax as a fair tax because one will voluntarily pay it when buying goods and services is nonsensical! How can telling people that they can’t buy something without paying a tax be considered any more fair than taking it out of profits and salaries? The mind continues to boggle.

Octo-Mom is just one of millions of spongers and opportunists that flourish in our culture of entitlement and lack of responsibility. Our schools teach us that altruism is the epitome of value, that it is only when we are altruistic that we can be happy. Add to that the fact that many (understatement!!!) come out of school unable to think, what do we expect to get but a bunch of moochers sucking producers dry.

The sad part is that the producers manage to think clearly enough to be productive, but not clearly enough to breach the social programming to realize that altruism is immoral. To be charitable is one thing; to not cry out against a system that deems it necessary to steal from producers and give to the moochers is another. Having your money taken away from you and used for purposes that you do not expressly agree to or with, is not in your best interest, financially or emotionally. And, regardless of current social norms, what is not in the rational best interest of even one individual, is immoral.

So why the outcry in Octo-Mom’s case? Put it down to a slow news day. The only difference between her and the mass of her ilk is not that she is more irresponsible or a bigger moocher; she isn’t. It’s simply that she came to the fore because of her unique pregnancy. The media does not have the will or even the intellectual ability to identify the link between her case and all those that she represents.

The subject of altruism will get a lot more typing time on this blog. Without general acceptance of the immorality of altruism, the mantra that it is better to give than receive will create an ever expanding crowd of takers.