Obamacare is Little More Than Sanctioned Stealing

American Thinker has an interesting piece on how forced charity of the type mandated by Obamacare will have a very negative effect on our society:

After the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Senate's health care bill (without changes because they could not craft and pass a bill of their own), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that the effort reflected American's founding declaration of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

A society that compels each individual to provide for the personal happiness of one's neighbor, which can come only from selling one's labor or one's private property, and then handing those earnings over by confiscatory taxes, is a society with less individual freedom or liberty. At the current bankrupting levels of benevolence that comprise Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, this health care log will no doubt pulverize every bone in the camel. The destruction of our great nation -- what the enemies of America could not accomplish by war, we are doing to ourselves by misplaced compassion.

We are not a collective. Nor are we slaves or servants to each other. While we hold many things in common, we must keep our hands off that from which all goodness and compassion come: the individual.

We are to be a nation of individuals, not only in principle, but practice. And what makes an individual real is the granting and protection of boundaries that surround each individual -- boundaries that secure each individual's freedom and happiness. Without such strong, inviolate boundaries, freedom to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is impossible.

When an individual looks within himself or herself and freely gives something of value, such as the labor of caregiving or buying medicine for a sick neighbor, the giver is giving of his or her very life itself, expressing freedom, and in so doing, experiencing genuine happiness -- and, no doubt, creating happiness within the recipient.

On the other hand, when an individual -- out of any motive whatsoever, be it compassion or envy -- compels another individual to take something valuable and give it to lessen the unhappiness of another or be punished, then the compeller commits a theft. It is a crime. Coercive kindness is a theft of life and liberty, and it diminishes one's ability to pursue happiness. And stealing from one's neighbor by proxy, by having one's elected representative do it on one's behalf, is not only cowardly; it is evil. Compulsive charity teaches us that it is okay to trample upon an individual's border. It teaches us to prey upon our neighbor's property and sanction stealing.

Read the rest of it here.

I'd love to examine the charitable giving of those congressmen who are now forcing us to provide charity to others. They are assuaging their own guilt at our expense.