|
Ed Broadbent is Dead Wrong
by Glenn Woiceshyn
Dear Editor,
Re: "The Rise and Fall of Economic and Social Rights -- by Edward Broadbent
-- Aug/29/96 ò The Globe and Mail
According to [former leader of the NDP party] Ed Broadbent, the "welfare state"
made Canada "number one" in the United Nations' eyes, whereas "laissez-faire
economics ... was largely responsible for the 1930s." Aside from the UN being
a leftist organization with questionable criteria and power-lusting motives, any
country (or person) can temporarily appear more prosperous by robbing its productive
citizens and mortgaging everyone's future. Perhaps today's "spread of insecurity
among ordinary people" has more to do with the widespread intellectual bankruptcy
of modern "welfare state" culture combined with the prospects of having
to pay for the irresponsible, unjust, "Keynesian-inspired" consumption
spree of the past several decades.
Mr. Broadbent's so-called "social and economic rights" consists of granting
to some the right to rule and loot others. Any alleged right to free health care,
housing, welfare and whatnot is a violation of the legitimate rights of those forced
to provide such "freebies." Why can't he see that the welfare state creates
poverty, misery and strife. It does so by effectively punishing ambition, self-reliance
and achievement while rewarding the opposite?
Mr. Broadbent claims that the welfare state is the "supreme democratic achievement
of the North Atlantic region." It was Germany's Bismarck who created welfare
statism in the 1880's, which marked the beginning of the end of laissez-faire capitalism's
decades of unprecedented world peace and skyrocketing prosperity. It was statism,
not capitalism, that gave us the 1930s depression and the bloody wars of our century.
Sincerely,
Glenn Woiceshyn
© 1997 Glenn Woiceshyn. All rights reserved.
This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
|
