The cheery fluff of December snow provided the proper mood for Christmas preparations.
It also presented an opportunity for some enterprising young men to earn some money.
Three boys knocked on my door and offered to clear my driveway and sidewalk. They quoted me a reasonable price. Even though the snow blower in the garage was poised for the job, they had a deal.
They worked quickly and efficiently in spite of the cold, so I gave them another task for additional pay. In the end, they earned three times the original bargain; we were all very pleased.
When I handed them their wages, I remarked how unusual it was to see young men with the ambition and drive they exhibited. I speculated that most boys their age – around 15 – were home watching TV or playing video games, to which the oldest boy responded: “Good! More work for us!”
I liked his attitude because it revealed something more than diligence. These kids exemplified a basic American freedom. They sought to profit from their own efforts and improve their personal finances.
Thomas Jefferson would call it the “Pursuit of Happiness.” I wonder if those boys would have been as productive if I’d told them I would pay them the agreed-upon price, but then I would deduct 30 percent from their pay and give it to the other boys in the neighborhood who were not so industrious?
I could make the case that it’s not fair for these kids with the shovels to have ALL the money; surely those other kids sitting at home deserve to have money, too. If they objected to my confiscation of their hard-earned cash, I could just call them “greedy” and tell them it’s better to “spead the wealth around.”
Do you think they would have considered me compassionate or charitable for re-distributing the money they had earned? Probably not, but that is what their government will do to them when they are a bit older and become gainfully employed.
All Americans realize that taxation is necessary for the defense of our nation and to maintain a civil society as defined by our founding documents, but in the recent past our country has strayed far from the principles of limited government established by our forefathers.
Jefferson believed that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor. He so stated in a letter to Joseph Milligan in 1816:
“To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
If a man is forced to toil for other men, is he really free? We must ask this question as our govenment at all levels oppresses the most productive of our citizens with ever more burdensome taxes and fees. Such punishment suppresses the ingenuity that benefits all Americans.
In the approaching New Year, I pray that all Americans will renew their understanding of the freedom for which Washington, Adams, Jefferson and all of our forefathers so courageously fought.
Let us not waste the chance we’ve been given to preserve their masterpiece of self-determination.
***Tonchi Weaver*** is a conservative activist and Life and Liberty News contributor
