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Our Mission |
Big government is not simply the size of the budget, or the number of federal programs; it is the role the federal government plays in our daily lives.
We at the Lincoln Heritage Institute will not sit idly by and allow bloated bureaucracies, budensome tax policies, a failing public education system, and out of control regulatory system, and a growing disregard for the rule of law to become an accepted way of life
We have as our purpose, through public education, the revitalization and preservation of our traditional political, social, commercial, and legal environment in which the only limits to achievement are individual ability and effort. |
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Institution of Private Property
is the Solution |
by Walter E. Williams, Nationally Syndicated Columnist
The institution of private property offers liberty-oriented solutions to both the school prayer and the
smoking issues. I believe it’s a parental right to be able to decide whether one’s child will, or will not, say a morning prayer. Conflict emerges because of government-produced education. While there might be an argument for government financing of education, there’s absolutely no argument for government production of education. Therefore, if each parent were given an education voucher to pay for education, those parents wishing prayers, or those against prayers in school, could enroll their children in the school that meets their preference. Thus, conflict would be eliminated. Of course, a superior solution would be getting government entirely out of education.
Private property would solve the smoking issue. Suppose you owned a restaurant, and you didn’t wish to permit smoking. How would you like it if people used the political system to enact laws that forced you to permit smoking? I’m sure you'd consider it tyranny, and I’d agree. But there’s symmetry. It’s just as much tyranny to use the political system to enact laws to force a restaurant owner who wished to permit smoking to ban smoking. The liberty-oriented solution might be to post a sign saying you don’t permit smoking, and customers wishing otherwise wouldn’t enter. The same principle would apply to restaurant owners who wished to permit smoking.
I fear that too many Americans have contempt for the principles of liberty and opt for solutions that employ the political arena to forcibly impose their wills on others. If that’s the preferred game, then those Americans shouldn’t whine when others employ the same tactic to impose their wills.
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Lincoln Heritage Institute lhi@wmis.net
620 Hall Street, Eaton Rapids, MI 48827
In Pennsylvania, 603 N. 3rd. St., Harrisburg, Pa.
Box 656 Main St., Pleasant Valley, NY, 12569 Fax (517) 663-5245
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