Your Brother's Keeper

Many Americans are concerned that their country in the last half a year or so has been rapidly moving towards socialism. Those who have not been misled into believing that this new “New Deal” will help our country overcome recession and improve the lives of the majority of Americans, warn us about dire financial and lifestyle consequences for us and future generations. However, only very few are ready to contemplate the moral consequences of the new Obama reforms.

Our leaders from both conservative and liberal sides encourage us to sacrifice for our country and for our neighbors allegedly because we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. All we have to do to make our society more fair, we are told, is to love each other and to help our government carry the burden of care for the underprivileged. I am sure that most of us already understand that this goal is too difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, as the history of mankind, especially in the 20^th century, shows. Yet we still believe that this is a worthwhile goal. Many of us agree that our society is too consumption oriented, too egoistic and too indifferent to the less fortunate. Therefore, in spite of all our distrust towards the government we continue to buy into “helping your neighbor” rhetoric. This is the rhetoric that occurs whenever our “wise and enlightened” leaders push for another reform meant to achieve a greater good for a greater many – a reform that is supposed to make us love each other and care about each other more.

However, in spite of all the beautiful promises of social architects, the results are exactly the opposite. When I first came to the United States from my native Russia, I was pleasantly surprised at the general feeling of benevolence: people smiling at each other, ready to help a stranger, giving to charities. Living in Russia I was used to treating a stranger as a person that you cannot trust, as a some kind of enemy. In the US, surely a more egoistic and profit-oriented country, that was not the case. Why? The answer was very simple although not very obvious. In a society where people are free to work for themselves, to take care of themselves and their loved ones, to take responsibilities for their own lives and to make their own decisions, people tend to be more satisfied about their lives. Consequently they are more respectful towards themselves and each other. On the other hand, I grew up in a society where every fruit of your labor was taken into the common pool and then redistributed “equally” by the government. This “fair” arrangement makes every one of your neighbors your competitor. Not a competitor for a portion of the free market which requires of you to be your best to succeed, but a competitor for a “free piece” of the common pie, where you have to present your worst to win the competition. When you have to convince a government official that you are more deserving of a new apartment or of an expensive surgery than your neighbor because you are more miserable, or because you have more children, you will begin to hate and despise your neighbors.

This is already happening in the USA where hard-working Americans are forced by their government to pay for their neighbors’ food stamps, education, healthcare, jobs, etc. Yet many of these hard-working Americans still continue like Hank Rearden from “Atlas Shrugged” to ignore that burden because it is still bearable or because they fool themselves into believing that it is moral to be generous to their brothers. Wait till the government nationalizes your healthcare. Now we hopefully still consider it immoral for a government official to decide who will get a certain treatment and who will be sacrificed. Wait until we get to the point where our limited common resources have to be distributed among unlimited medical needs. Will we all agree with our leaders that when one has to choose between saving the life of a healthy child and the life of an old or handicapped person, the child should have the priority? Will we all turn into a bunch of whining moochers begging the government for a handout and hating every one of our neighbors for their very existence? If you still subscribe to the premise that our underprivileged brothers suffer from our neglect in this age of egoism and profit-hunting, wait till you are forced to live in a socialist society.

This, in my mind, is the gravest implication of a society where you are forced to be your brother’s and sister’s keeper – the resulting hate and distrust of all your brothers and sisters.