[fretelöo]

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The issue is whether or not the gov't should force someone to take an action because that action is ethically or morally right. Or punish inaction because that inaction is ethically or morally wrong.

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OP raised a different question, I'm afraid:

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Assuming the US has a population of 300 million and the wealth it now owns, should a baby born with no arms and no legs, (with no chance of being fixed), but otherwise healthy, be kept alive and healthy by the government if no one else will do it?

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It's not about the govt. forcing me to take up one of those babies myself. It's just whether help should be granted at all. And I think the answer is a very obvious "YES!".

Whether it's morally right to force someone to do something morally right is a different question. Gov't can never do such things as it's bound by codes of law; governmental action, therefore, is always legally right/wrong (by that I mean that the primary way of judging gov'tal action is by means of "according to the law - against the law". Of course "according to the law" might still be "morally wrong" , but from that it doesn't follow that it's permissible in such a case to just not follow the law. They just have to execute what's the law. So, morally right/wrong isn't the "correct" way of evaluating governmental actions). If government would start refraining from doing something because it feels it's morally obliged to do so DESPITE the law stating otherwise, this would probably be the end of said state/government.
Whether it is right for the govt to enforce the law is a big, resounding "Yes!" again.

Whether the law in itself is just, is an alltoghether different question, and, what seems to be the main intuition of many here: Govt. forces me to do something that is/might be morally right, but that process of enforcement is in itself injust.

But that's besides the point. Gov't enforces the law. Period. The question of morality of that enforcement doesn't even arise. The G. just does what it's supposed to do.

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And while helping another person may be someone's moral and ethical responsibility, forcing them to do it is also immoral and unethical.

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I guess that's true. But it wasn't the point of debate - at least not of what I was arguing for and against.

EDIT: On a completely unrelated note and not referring to this particular discussion: Would it also be morally wrong to force someone to do something that HE HIMSELF deems morally right also? Forcing someone to live up to his own moral standards (which you share) - is that still morally wrong?