Enslaving the Next Generation in the Nicest Possible Way and for the Noblest of Motives

There is very often a gap between what people think they are doing and the real consequences of their actions. We kid ourselves about the effect that our actions have on the lives of others. That is why the Prophet Jeremiah, under Divine inspiration, wrote "The heart is deceitful above all things, who can know it?" God answered that He is the One who knows the heart of man. Which is to say, we can't be trusted to be objective when evaluating the morality of our own actions. We require an outside reference point for that, and there is only one such moral reference point which is truly objective- God Himself.

That brings us to our little controversy in the State Senate recently. When proponents of Medicaid Expansion (under the disingenuous name "Arkansas Works") started questioning the Christian values of those who refused to support the plan, Senator Terry Rice responded by saying, "We are enslaving future generations, our children and grandchildren — to debt that we are irresponsibly putting on their credit card. That to me is ... unbiblical."

While proponents of the plan don't mind insinuating that those opposed to the spending are unchristian, they bristle at the suggestion that they might be themselves. Senator Stephanie Flowers took exception to Senator Rice's statement. She said "I would never vote for a bill that enslaved anybody," and further, "I don't think that's what we're doing when we're providing health care for the poorest Americans. I have a serious problem with that kind of statement. Humanity dictates that we ought to give people an opportunity to have a healthy lifestyle. That's not enslavement. I'm willing to have my son, and any grandchild, help somebody out when they're sick."

Senator Flowers seems like a nice person. I can just tell that she is. I don't question her Christian values. But I do question her objectivity to evaluate her own actions. And I do her no insult when I say that because as I pointed out at the start of this article we all tend to have trouble doing that. Senator Terry Rice is exactly correct when he says that they are making debt slaves of the next generation. And we are doing it to lavish government benefits on ourselves now.

The national debt right now is over $59,000 per citizen. This means that each new child born in America starts off with that much debt hanging over their heads, stifling the economy in which they must live and work. And each and every day over $2 billion dollars of debt is added to the national total as government relentlessly spends more of the next generation's money. The FEDS propose to pay for 90% of the expense of expanding Medicaid, but let's be frank. they are paying for most of it with the next generation's money.

If someone handed you a $59,0000 bill for items that you had no say in, would you be OK with it? What happens when that bill gets to $100,000, or $200,000? These are debts of a size that most people cannot work their way out of. "Debt slavery" at some point becomes the perfect term to describe where today's politicians are taking tomorrow's children with their non-stop generational looting.

Senator Flowers tells herself that she is "providing health care for the poorest Americans". In truth she is not providing anything except access to the next generation's pockets. They are the ones that will be providing whatever health care is given, whether they can afford it or not and whether they consent to provide it or not. Nor is she doing it for "the poorest Americans" as if it is OK for me to steal from your children if you have more than I do. For one thing, the very poorest were already covered under existing Medicaid, along with the disabled. Their funds are now being threatened by this new program. Its called breaking the safety-net due to over loading.

For another thing, those are not the poorest Americans. The poorest Americans are the next generation who come into this world with nothing. No money, no assets, no skills, no education, no jobs. All they have is the $59,000 and growing debt that we have burdened them with in our eagerness to tell ourselves what good people we are for "providing" this or that through government debt.

She continues "humanity dictates that we ought to give people an opportunity to have a healthy lifestyle." Once again, she is not giving anyone anything except access to the next generation's earnings. They are obligated to spend untold hours of their life working to pay for the things she decides that others ought to have at their expense. And they have no say in the matter. How anyone can deny that this is very much like slavery is a testimony to the truth of scripture concerning the deceitfulness of the human heart.

If she feels that we ought to give anyone anything, then she should arrange to pay for it, all of it, through increasing taxes or cutting less worthy spending. At least those of us here and now can vote against her or donate to her opponent if we feel like she wants government to pay for too much. The next generation has no vote to defend itself from the predatory looting of today's politicians whose disgraceful conduct is made worse by their efforts to cover it in religious platitudes and call it holy. It is a swine offered at the alter.

She does offer up her own offspring when she says "I'm willing to have my son, and any grandchild, help somebody out when they're sick." So am I. But I want it to be their choice, not mine. I am the steward of my child's life, not the owner. I am to provide for and train them up only for a brief time before they become their own stewards. It is not up to me to dictate to my children or grand children how many hours they must work each day to re-pay the debt which I used to benefit strangers. They must make their own decisions about who to help out and how much. I hope I train them up so that they are able to do so early and willing to do so generously. This is the right and true way we should be willing to have our children and grandchildren help out the sick people. The sick of this generation are our burden, not theirs.

But if she will not listen to me, perhaps she will listen to a prominent Democrat: Thomas Jefferson. He wrote "spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."  Now one might be willing to dismiss Jefferson because he was a slave-owner. What one should see instead is that even though he was willing to own other human beings, he was not willing to make debt slaves of the next generation. By all accounts, as slave owners go and by the standards of the times, he was good to his slaves. How good are we being to our own slaves? That is, the debt slaves we are creating by this wanton deficit spending so that we can feel good about ourselves?