"Ours To Choose" by George Peck
The Government-Owns-You-System or the You-Own-The-Government System.
The follow article written by George Peck, “Ours To Choose,” was published in the Brewery Gulch Gazette on May 17, 1945:
There really are only two systems of government: (1) The Government-Owns-You-System, and (2) The You-Own-The-Government-System.
The first of these systems has a great many different names. A few of these are Nazism, Fascism, Totalitarianism, Collectivism, Marxism, Communism, Socialism and Planned Economy. It was Shakespeare who said: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Under the skin all of these Isms are the same in that they inevitably lead to the same end—demanding full cooperation of the individual and handing out punishment if it is not given. Under all of them, the individual’s liberty eventually is completely confiscated; he tills the soil or works in the factory according to the rules laid down by the government that OWNS him; even his domestic life, his amusements, his educational and cultural pursuits are decreed and supervised by government.
The second of these systems, the You-Own-The-Government-System, which we know as the American Way and under which this country proposed for more than a century and a half, reduces government action and domination to an almost irreducible minimum. It leaves individuals and businesses to their own devices, to sink or swim; the government simply acting as umpire to see to it that all participants play the game fairly. This system recognizes that some individuals and businesses have gotten themselves into bad predicaments, through avarice, incompetence and mismanagement; that there always will be some such, but that for the good of the individual and business, it is better for natural law to remedy and punish rather than to call for action by government.
We have in this country a number of people who, either through ignorance or for selfish reasons, are in favor of and are advocating that we change from our present system to one of the Government-Owns-You-Systems. These people are for more and more government controls of individuals and businesses and are against Free, Competitive Enterprise and individual freedom.
There is no lasting middle-ground between these two systems. The immortal Abraham Lincoln said: “I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.” One must be either for one system or the other. One either wishes to be a free individual, controlling his government, deciding for himself how and where he shall live, how he shall clothe himself, how he shall amuse himself and what he shall eat; or one believes that he and his fellow citizens are not capable of governing themselves and that government must step in to take them over, body and soul, to dictate their every move.
All too many of the American people temporarily have been dazed by the spell-binding proponents of the Government-Owns-You-System. It is high time for these people to sit down and reason with themselves, to ask themselves if they really wish to give up the liberties and rights which they now enjoy under the American Way or Life, and subject themselves to the tyranny of a bureaucratic system that will deny them those rights and liberties. Today it is still OURS TO CHOOSE—tomorrow it may be too late.1
George Peck, “Ours to Choose,” Brewery Gulch Gazette, May 17, 1945, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89070012/1945-05-17/ed-1/seq-4/.