How do you value life?

Published 6:27 pm Wednesday, February 6, 2013

This is probably one of the most difficult questions that can be posed.  I don’t intend to dive into a deep philosophical discussion on the value of life, however. The answer to the question, no matter how elusive, has meaning.  The value that our government places on the life of an individual citizen has great meaning to each of us.  Most Americans view the answer to this question from a Christian values basis. But what happens when our national leaders don’t share our values?

The federal government has a number of different views that none of us will agree with.  The federal views are all based on dollars.  Dollars described in studies done by various government officials.  The Social Security people look at us from the point of contributions while we are working.  We are told to trust the government and cough up the cash. Our cash will be protected and we can have our share when we retire.  Just try to tell Uncle Sam you don’t want to participate and you discover that our government knows exactly how much it is going to cost to make you pay.

The same Social Security agency knows what it costs to pay the medical bills for seniors and the indigent.  The IRS has a more difficult time in determining just how much they can wring out of each citizen on April 15.  To put it in simple terms: we have a plus value to the government when we are producing revenue and a negative value when we are receiving a check from good ol’ Uncle Sam.

The politicians value us by how much they paid for our vote.  Politicians have a conflicted view of our value because they normally use our own money to purchase our vote.  Our votes must be more valuable than we suspected.  Politicians pay millions for our votes when they buy them in bulk.  We need to remember when the poles open the next time that when we give our vote to a politician, we have given them the right to affect our life’s value.  We will have given them the right to tax us. But they believe they have the right to determine when we are of no further value.

This week we have seen our government state that they have the right to kill, murder (or assassinate) American citizens living on foreign soil.  According to the definitive statement we need to be guilty of nothing more than living in the blast radius of a terrorist’s home when it is struck by a missile fired from a drone.  Apparently our government wants the right to fly these over American soil.   We don’t have anything to worry about; baby killing is forbidden by our government after the third trimester.

What value does our government place on a the life of an American citizen?  How much will it cost to defend the government from possible civil action?  We have seen numerous American citizens murdered in the US by our government.  Killed without due process.  If you think that our constitutional rights to life and liberty will protected you from physical harm by our government, I would suggest you ask your self a few questions.  Will our leaders place the same value on our life that the founding fathers did when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the Bill of Rights?  Then ask yourself: Do they respect and defend our Constitution?  If the answers you arrive at are less than a resounding, “Yes,” then you, like I, need to worry about how our Government values your life!

Ed Tyler lives in Pell City. He may be reached at ed@edtylerinc.com