The inaugural speech, I found it on the Internet last night, because I thought it might be a good idea to watch it since I’m doing my paper on it. It might be a mistake, because I have so much to say about it that it will take too much time away from doing actual school work. Be that as it may, I’m taking time out anyway. There is one passage of the speech that bothers me in that it is extremely deceptive, and it brings to mind a lot of things.

For instance, I’m also enrolled in an ancient Roman history class. The reasons for studying Roman history become apparent once one actually starts getting into it. Of course I know that the consensus would be that there is no need, and studying history is a form of mental masturbation, nothing really productive in it. In a sense that’s true, because for studying history to be productive in any way, it would have to influence people enough to improve one’s thought process, even just a little, but enough to effect some kind of positive change. That rarely happens, it seems to me that more often than not history tends to influence people enough to effect a negative change. It could also be true that I’m just too negative, as my wife suggests. So, in Roman history there are certain circumstances that most agree affected the course of history in a major way. One of those was the land reform concepts of the first of the Gracchi brothers. This guy decided, for whatever reason, that it was time, around 123 BC, to get things back to the way they were. It was illegal at that time for any person to acquire too much wealth, and back then land equated to wealth. This concept stemmed from the days of the kings 400 years earlier, the idea being that too much wealth equated to too much power, and they had had enough of that from kings that did whatever the hell they wanted. It seems that around this time the law against owning too much property was being ignored, and more and more of the common people were forced into working the land for the owners in return for little or no subsistence. This was depleting the armies. How is that, you say? Well, in order to have the honor of fighting in the army, you had to be able to supply not only a warm body for the killing field, but also the equipment you would need for doing so. As more people lost their land in this system, there were fewer people with the means to fight for Rome. This Gracchus fellow saw this as a potential problem, and it was just this problem that the law was designed to circumvent, well one of them anyway. He proposed a simple solution, give the land back to the people that actually work it, so they would have the means to supply themselves for military campaign. This was of course ancient Rome’s bread and butter, bringing others under their influence.

The people were all for it, and it would have solved the growing problem of poverty in the growing realm, as well as people’s willingness to follow someone into battle. Trying to affect the change caused big problems, and eventually brought about the demise of the republic, and the return to another form of regal rule.

Why do I bring all this up? It’s simple. There are some in this country, and the world, that think acquiring and accumulating wealth is ok, and in fact a person’s right. I disagree, I think everyone has the right to protection of their property, whether this is supplied by that person, or by government. It doesn’t make sense though that everyone should have the right to amass wealth and property in large quantities that go way beyond what is necessary to sustain one person. History has always proven that it only causes trouble by oppressing and depriving others in some way, shape or form.

This brings to mind a scenario, one that illustrates the fallacies of certain justifications for the soundness of hoarding wealth concept. We have two people. Neither work, do nothing at all with their lives but consume and contribute nothing productive to society. I think nobody would disagree that everyone one should do anything they are capable of in order to be productive in some way to society. But here we have two people that do absolutely nothing themselves to this end. One, sits around all day, eats, shits, sleeps, and watches tv and plays video games all day. The means for doing this is public assistance. The other does nothing but party, attend movies, plays, concerts, travels, basically consuming. Much more consuming going on, but they have the means. It comes by way of the family, wealth accumulated over generations, so much so that there is enough to support this persons endeavors. The first scenario happens all the time, more so than the second I would tend to think. The way our society thinks, the one is situation is perfectly acceptable, while the other is not. There is basically no difference, both are existing at the expense of someone else, the first by public assistance, the second off ancestors. Why is it that the basic concept of existing without contribution is ok in one example, but not ok in another.

The point is this; when there is an accumulation of wealth, it is always at the expense of others. It doesn’t have to be that way, it is possible for one to amass wealth and NOT be a burden on society, which is the way some justify the accumulation of wealth. The problem is that a person’s greed works in such a way that they find ways to amass wealth which indirectly deprives others of their right to a basic comfortable existence as long as they are productive in some way.

Now I know this line of reasoning isn’t flawless, but the basic concepts are there for any reasonable person to see. Yes, there are situations that display exceptions to the rule, and people argue using these exceptions enough to cloud the basic argument, either to convince someone else, or themselves. What brings all this up? Like I said, I’ve been torturing myself with the inaugural speech because I have to write a paper using it as my source. There is one paragraph that really has me going…

In America’s ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance—preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

In America’s ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character—on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before—ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

His basic purpose here is to justify the administrations ideas about reforming the ‘institutions’ he talks about. He uses freedom, a concept everyone in America is well familiar with, and everyone agrees with. But he subverts these concepts, argues that doing away with these programs gives people more freedom to make their own choices in these controversial circumstances that everyone finds themselves in; basic health, basic health, and subsistence in old age. The problem with these ideas is that when you throw the human factor into the mix, this 'freedom' to make one's own choices traps people that can't make the right choices because there are too many dishonest people ready to lead them down the wrong path in order increase the wealth of the dishonest people.