Why Jon Stewart's 9/11 Outrage Is An Outrage

First, as I've written about before and some of you may know, I was an eyewitness to the Muslim terrorist attack on New York City on 9/11/2001, the most deadly attack on American soil by any foreign entity in history since the United States was established. I lost friends, I almost lost family, and I witnessed things on that day and in the months to follow that will live in my memory to my own dying day.

But that isn't what this blog is about. It's about the left's perversion of the concept of charity by commingling it with oppressive totalitarian government authority.

A couple of days ago I had the misfortune to watch Jon Stewart appear before Congress, expressing outrage that Congress has been slow to appropriate taxpayer funding to continue to pay for the costs associated with the health problems that 9/11 first responders suffered as a result of their exposure to carcinogens at the site of the attack. Indeed he was seemingly infuriated that they had to even keep asking for this funding to be renewed every so often over the 18 years since the attack. Apparently he has been a champion of this cause for some time. It sounds noble on its face, but it's not.

My first observation is that like all actors, it's hard to tell how much of his emotional outburst is real and how much is contrived, but that's also a diversion from the point so I won't discuss it here.

Helping the first responders to that attack is a worthy cause. I have sympathy for them and have no problem with it. What I do have a problem with is using the power of the government to force other people to pay for it and just assuming that's okay. That's not charity, it's totalitarianism. Charity is about voluntarily contributing to a cause, not being forced to do so.

Helping first responders is a worthy cause. It has a place on the world's gigantic list of things worthy of charitable help. But it doesn't necessarily make everyone's top priority list of possible donations. Speaking for myself, for example, I have a family member who served in Afghanistan fighting against the Muslim terrorists who brought us 9/11. He was severely wounded and will need tremendous help for the rest of his life. The costs are astronomical. On my list of priorities, helping him with donations comes before the 9/11 first responders as worthy as they are. As much as I want to help them, whatever money I am forced to pay for that cause, I would rather give to my family member. Call me mean and uncompassionate, but that's the reality and I consider it my God given right to determine how I use the limited resources I've earned to donate to help others as I decide, not as someone else decides.

How about this Mr. Stewart. I'd be willing to pay for the government to do a mailing to ask for voluntary contributions from Americans and have a checklist of worthy causes to which they can voluntarily contribute instead of forcing them to pay for someone else's priority cause. What you are proposing is not charity, it's totalitarian government authority and I don't approve regardless of how worthy the cause may be. You aren't asking for donations, you are asking for people to be forced to pay for this cause because you, with your apparently superior sense of morality, have determined that it is of higher moral value than say, contributing to help for my family member. I resent that, and I am not acting when I express MY outrage towards your arrogant, coercive activities.

It's not like I'm surprised though. The left has a passion for using the government to force other people to pay for things they claim are the moral priorities everyone must abide by whether they agree with them or not. They seem to revel in the concept of forcing people to do things against their will, the opposite of the conservative value of individual liberty that this country was founded upon.