According to the logic of Congressman Ed Perlmutter, somebody standing in a Soviet bread line has no right to criticize Soviet bread lines, because he is after all waiting his turn for the bread.
Veteran political reporter Lynn Bartels seems to buy into Perlmutter’s “gotcha” nonsense when she writes, “The real news out of the 9News debate Saturday was that Frazier continually blasts the stimulus bill on the campaign trail, but the charter school he co-founded and helps oversee accepted stimulus funds.”
ColoradoPols carries Perlmutter’s own release, which claims that “Ed Perlmutter revealed Frazier’s hypocrisy about Frazier’s position on the stimulus bill.”
By this logic, in a totally socialized economy, in which the tax rate is 100 percent (meaning that politicians dole out every last cent of meager wealth and every resident is entirely a beggar), absolutely no one has any right to criticize any government program whatsoever, because everyone is completely dependent on political programs for every aspect of their life.
In less extreme forms, this argument often takes the following forms. “If you drive on tax-funded roads, you have no right to criticize tax-funded roads.” “If you send your children to tax-funded schools, you have no right to criticize tax-funded schools.” “If you accept Social Security benefits (or tax-subsidized student loans or whatever), then you have no right to criticize Social Security (or whatever other program).”
Perlmutter’s basic injustice is to forcibly transfer wealth away from citizens, and then claim those citizens whom he robbed cannot enjoy any of the benefits of their own stolen property, unless they are perfectly servile and sycophantic subjects.
Well, screw you, Ed. I sincerely hope that Ryan Frazier returns your prissy slap with a knockout political blow.
Ayn Rand explained the issue perfectly in her 1966 essay, “The Question of Scholarships:”
Since there is no such thing as the right of some men to vote away the rights of others, and no such thing as the right of the government to seize the property of some men for the unearned benefit of others — the advocates and supporters of the welfare state [including the corporate welfare state] are morally guilty of robbing their opponents, and the fact that the robbery is legalized makes it morally worse, not better. The victims do not have to add self-inflicted martyrdom to the injury done to them by others; they do not have to let the looters profit doubly, by letting them distribute the money exclusively to the parasites who clamored for it. Whenever the welfare-state laws offer them some small restitution, the victims should take it…