| > Save the Children ... will advance the survival and the health of women, mothers, newborns, and children worldwide. > The entire premise of a limited republican government is based upon limiting the coercion of the state. > We should not be voting away property for special causes or partisan journalists. > If we recall history, the issues around 1776 were in response to an unaccountable parliament taxing colonists without adequate representation. You're equating taxation with coercion, to justify unelected, unappointed individuals forcibly changing how taxes are spent. Then somehow trying to make a connection to taxation without representation. When, in reality, the spending was made through representation, and this reversal of spending is being made without it. Look, just because you happen to agree with the autocrats doesn't make them any less autocratic. I believe we can and we should "vote away property for special interests" like providing basic care for mothers and babies who might otherwise die, and therefore have no chance to experience either life or liberty. You're free to disagree on the "should", and we can have civil debate on that resolved through democratic means. But if you disagree on the "can", I'm afraid that's just authoritarianism cloaked in the guise of libertarianism. Keep in mind that total US foreign aid has been less than 1.5% of the total federal budget going at least as far back as the year 2000. [1] Since you bring up western liberalism and accuse me of illiteracy, I'll wrap up by quoting none other than J.S. Mill himself: "Governments and nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life." [2] [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/06/what-the-...
[2] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm |