The most important criticism to be made of the welfare state is that it protects people from the consequences of their bad choices and therefore fosters and encourages those very choices, which generally follow the line of least resistance or favor instant gratification over longer-term desiderata. The welfare state undermines the taking of individual responsibility, especially where the economic difference between taking it and not taking it tends to be rather small, at least in the short-term.
NewEnglishReview: Compassion, it seems to me, is better as a retail than as a wholesale virtue. No doubt there are exceptional individuals who are able to feel genuine compassion toward vast populations or categories of humans, but I think they are few. The more widely a person’s compassion is cast, the thinner it tends to be spread, until we begin to suspect that it is not genuine compassion at all, but a pose or an exhibition of virtue—in short, mere humbug, at best an aspiration, at worst a career move.
How we think of individuals is necessarily different from how we think of whole categories of individuals. For example, the other day I was walking through the streets of Sydney, a rich and prosperous city where there is nearly full employment. On the corner of a busy street kneeled a young man, shabbily dressed but far from being in rags, holding out before him an upturned paper cup from Hungry Jack’s, a local franchise of Burger King, in an appeal for alms. He looked down at the ground as if in some kind of penance; there was a humility in his posture that I found not so much appealing as distressing.
There are no free rides. If it sounds to good to be true, it is. Words to live by.
I find the use of the word “charity” to describe the wholesale distribution of wealth from earners to receivers to be quite disturbing. After all, what does “charity” mean?
Those familiar with Scripture have heard 1 Corinthians 13:13 – “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” This is the wording found in the King James Version. However, the same verse in the New International Version reads this way – “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Both translations are nearly identical, but with one glaring difference: “charity” has been changed to “love”. This indicates that the two words are interchangeable.
With that in mind, can a bureaucratic federal government express LOVE? You tell me. When was the last time you went to the DMV and felt the warmth of human compassion? When was the last time you had a warm, fuzzy feeling standing in the TSA line?
If we want to be charitable – in the fullest sense of the word – we must do so in LOVE. That includes TOUGH LOVE, which means sometimes SAYING “NO”.
Otherwise, spare me the faux righteousness and call socialized welfare what it is.
Now would be an awfully good time to put the Darwinian laws of natural selection into play. We could breed all the leeches out of society in a couple of generations by restrictions benefits to those who truly are in need.