Ok, I think I’m beginning to catch on. This is a bit like the question of whether a corporation is or can be moral. Leadership, either governmental or corporate, needs to follow the wishes of those that give it a mandate to exercise power but it also must lead as well. Am I on the right track? I don’t assume that people are all together on their morals at all. Not everyone was in agreement on Medicare. Some were very much against it. American insurance companies poured a lot money into an opposing campaign. There were all kinds of scare tactics used, but the majority of the people eventually saw through that and now for years it’s been one of our most cherished programs, but there are still groups who would like to change it in one way or another. The point is that in a democracy the government rules based on the wishes of the majority, and if the majority hold a certain belief or want a certain thing done then the government is obliged to do it. The motivations of the people may be moral, or partly moral, or they may be different for different people. But if the people want the government to fund social programs then that’s what the government should do. The government is following the will of the people in this instance, not leading it. You are right to say that if the government didn’t do it that all 32 million Canadians wouldn’t be lining up at hospitals and clinics to do it. That just wouldn’t be efficient or practical, and this is one of the key reasons why the people want the government to administer these programs. It would be a mess otherwise and many people would not get the care they need and deserve. Maybe the best similar example to look at would be primary and secondary education. Providing education for disadvantaged people, or for anyone for that matter, is clearly a moral issue, at least in part. Should the government then get out of it and let private individuals build and run the schools and school system? Imagine how quickly the US would turn into a third world country if that were to happen. Douglas was the Premier of Saskatchewan for 17 years and later became the leader of the national branch of that party, but nationally they were never more than a 3rd place party. This was largely due to the fact that they grew out of the west and in the east there were still strong traditional voting patterns for the two leading parties. So he wasn’t representing a special interest group. Undoubtedly people supported Medicare for different reasons, but as I said, Douglas was a minister and he promoted it using lines like, “but for the grace of God there go I,” and, “what we wish for ourselves we desire for all.” He often talked about “building a new Jerusalem in this green a pleasant land.” His message was very much a moral, Christian, message. He wasn’t hiding that one bit. For clarification I should add that Medicare was first implemented in Saskatchewan and it was promoted by Douglas for 15 years before there was enough political will for it. In this instance he led the people. For him it was unquestionably a moral issue, and specifically a Christian moral issue, but he didn’t act on it until he knew it would be accepted. Federally the governments, who were of different political stripes, only implemented it nationally several years later when it became clear that there was overwhelming support for across the country. In this case the government followed the will of the people. As I have illustrated above, even when Douglas led on this issue he only implemented the program when he knew it would be accepted. If a leader tries to use law to force compliance on an issue that people don’t want they weill vote that leader out. That’s democracy. You appear to be describing some kind of totalitarian state, and what you are saying may be true there, but it is not and cannot be true in a healthy democracy, because in that system the people are the government. What’s your point here? It would be hard to calculate but I could probably do it. I’d have to calculate how much of may taxes were used to pay such bills. Again, I think you have this backwards, and we’ve covered much of this earlier in the thread also. The government is us. “We the people,” and, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” are lines directly from the constitution. Here is where the constitution becomes relevant because it’s defining the very basics of what we’re talking about. The government doesn’t tell us to fork over the money. We tell the government that we want it to establish and run a program for us. This is a democracy, not a totalitarian state, right? We do this because it’s much more efficient and effective for governments to supply basic needs than a patchwork system of charities. Not only would money be wasted in this latter system, but more needy people would fall through the cracks, and that is a significant moral issue as well. And again, this is only half the solution because caring human contact is essential for helping disadvantaged people too. No. Not all moral choices are free choices. You can’t decide to murder someone without consequences. In Canada we certainly do want the government to regulate p*rnography, particularly when it comes to child p*rnography and other forms of clear exploitation. We do want the government to run schools. As far as helping your neighbour do his roof, however, that’s up to you. These are all things our society has made choices on and instructed our governments to act on. We want the government to do some things, and we don’t want it to do others. It depends on the issue whether it is something best administered by the government or by individuals or private organisations. Big Brother? Content? The picture that’s emerging for me is that you have completely lost faith in your democracy. I find that a bit strange because you quote the constitution a lot, but you don’t appear to believe even the first line. Is this the case? It may well be time to reform some of the basics of the US system, and if you don’t see the government as being representative of the people or worse if you see it as being a threat to the people, then you need to do what you can to work to change that. I think the root of the problem in this issue is that you appear to have no faith in your democracy. Some/most European countries have mandatary military service, but it’s my understanding that pacifists can choose to serve their time in other ways. Canada doesn’t have mandatary military service. Man, you sure have some issues with your government. Who knows, maybe you have a right to be. Some of that cold war stuff that’s come to light and programs like Cointelpro are pretty alarming. Taxation is not a bad thing, though. Without it the government couldn’t do most of the things we direct it to do. Questions about whether the money is being well spent are certainly valid, but taxation itself is a cornerstone of democracy. Without it you have no government and you have anarchy. It’s not the nature of a healthy government or a healthy democracy, and I think that’s where your problem lies. The problem with having too weak a government is that other forces will come in and dictate the conditions you live in even more. You have much less control over corporations, self-interested or special interest organisations, or even organized crime than you do over a democratically elected government. I think the solution to the problems you’ve identified is some very significant reforms to your democratic institutions rather than a scaling back of them that would leave you more vulnerable to other less accountable power blocks.
"Ok, I think I’m beginning to catch on. This is a bit like the question of whether a corporation is or can be moral. Leadership, either governmental or corporate, needs to follow the wishes of those that give it a mandate to exercise power but it also must lead as well. Am I on the right track? " -Successful leaders have good morals and successful societies have good morals. But good leaders don't try to dictate and force the morals of their choosing, nor do they rely upon the wishes of any mandate. True good leaders are only good because they have good morals. If you do not understand this point we have again just passed in the night. "I don’t assume that people are all together on their morals at all. Not everyone was in agreement on Medicare. Some were very much against it. American insurance companies poured a lot money into an opposing campaign. There were all kinds of scare tactics used, but the majority of the people eventually saw through that and now for years it’s been one of our most cherished programs, but there are still groups who would like to change it in one way or another." -Whether a program like medicare is good or not again misses my point. There are good programs and bad programs. Those are relative, subjective and mostly dependent upon who benefits, who doesn't and who suffers. When it comes to deciding what is a good moral choice everyone has different points of reference and individual motivations. It is not as important that everyone agrees before government passes laws, it is more important that people make their own individual moral choices. Passing a law banning alcohol consumption is not nearly important as the choices people make concerning individual responsible behavior. "The point is that in a democracy the government rules based on the wishes of the majority, and if the majority hold a certain belief or want a certain thing done then the government is obliged to do it. The motivations of the people may be moral, or partly moral, or they may be different for different people. But if the people want the government to fund social programs then that’s what the government should do. The government is following the will of the people in this instance, not leading it. You are right to say that if the government didn’t do it that all 32 million Canadians wouldn’t be lining up at hospitals and clinics to do it. That just wouldn’t be efficient or practical, and this is one of the key reasons why the people want the government to administer these programs. It would be a mess otherwise and many people would not get the care they need and deserve." I have no idea what you mean here since it is not practiced in America. In the American democracy the government rules based upon the influence of special interest groups, pork spending, and perceived public pressure. I cannot think of one instance where campaign slogans that persuaded voters to vote were drafted into legislation that in any way stayed true to a campaign or platform promise. Someone may have promised to fix social securtiy, or win the war of terror, or stop illegal drug traffic- but to my knowledge statistically speaking we are batting well under .100 I live here and at no time in my 52 yrs of being an American and my study of American history do I know of an incident where it has been proven that the government enacted legislation because it was proven that the majority of the citizenry demanded it. Never have I seen where a clear majority of people voted in a social program on any referrendum or amendment. Social programs are always driven by special interest and drafted by the government and then sold to the populace. This is historically verifiable in our government's history. And BTW- I am not against any of this, just discussing it. "You are right to say that if the government didn’t do it that all 32 million Canadians wouldn’t be lining up at hospitals and clinics to do it. That just wouldn’t be efficient or practical, and this is one of the key reasons why the people want the government to administer these programs. It would be a mess otherwise and many people would not get the care they need and deserve." - This is a misleading statement because the truth is 32 million Canadians never had a moral conviction to help the disadvantaged at the hospitals and clinics. A moral conviction always results in action, typically sacrifice. A moral is something that you don't change even if it costs your life. Anything less is a preference. If Canadians really had a moral mandate to help the disadvantaged in hospitals they would have been doing it long before there was national health care. And it is very easy to do; if 32 million Canadians had wanted to help the disadvantaged with their medical bills it would have been the simplest form of charity imagined. Just call the hospital finance office, find out the needs, and mail a designated check. The truth and reality is people do just what they really want to do. Good intentions is never the same as actual commitment. Canadians are like Americans they feel better if the government decides their moral commitment for them. It seems cheaper and requires no more sacrifice than a slightly higher tax. That isn't a knock on Canadians or national healthcare either, more a comment on human nature that is observable and verifiable. Again if the moral and expressed will of the people is what government was moved by the scenario would look this way- Instead of Mr. Douglas taking 15 yrs to get Medicare support from the people the picture would have looked this way: Mr. Douglas the citizens of Saskatchewan obviously have a mandate of helping the disadvantaged with their medical costs because they do it consistently and generously. They send a portion of their paychecks to local hospitals to help pay for people's bills. Not only that it isn't just a few doing this but we estimate over 70% of the citizens are commited to this practice. Mr. Douglas this is a genuine public mandate. Since the people are morally committed to this why don't we set up some public meetings and see if they would rather run the money here through the government and we will set up a program that satifies their strong moral conviction to help these people. It will cost them alot more money due to the buraucracy, government paperwork, overhead, and government inefficiency; but at least it will secure their charity and generosity and moral convictions for future generations. Now that is how a public mandate void of special interest lobbies and political pressure really works. Well that's enough, it is obvious we are not staying on the same page. I could go on and on, but you are absolutely correct about me having serious problems about the way the American govt. is headed. The democracy that America has become is far removed from the Constitutional Republic it began with and I am sad to see it go and regret that my children never knew it. I love my country but there is a lot less I am proud of today as I was 40 yrs ago. Sorry we never quite got the thought processes together. I sure respect your views and I beleive in their principles- helping others.
Once again I've only had a chance to skim this thread but I think Rhester what you are getting at is whether something is moral if you are forced to do it. There's a valid point there since the definition of "moral" is know what is right and doing it so in the definition there is an implied choice. I believe your argument is that if government compels you to do something through the force of law or even if it uses your resources in the form of taxes and does something good with it that isn't moral since you haven't been given a choice in the matter. While I think this is certainly a good ideological position I'm not sure how much that can apply to the situations we are dealing with. What Grizzled and others have been getting at is that in a democracy yes government does compel moral behavior but it represents the collective will of the populace. So while individually citizens might not on their own act in a particular moral way they have made a moral decision to empower government to act in a certain way. So rather than an individual choice there is a collective choice. Take Grizzled's example of Canada's medicare system. Individual Canadians might not on their own agree to pay for the medical bills of other Canadians but they have collectively agreed to do so by empowering government as an indirect way of paying for medical bills. So indirectly every Canadian has made the decision to pay for the medical bills of other Canadians and have made a moral choice that is reflected in ongoing support for keeping the Canadian Medicare system. The problem that I see you are looking at it is that you are approaching it all from the individual standpoint while not considering whether there is a collective morality. In a democracy government is legislating morality but a morality that reflects the collective individual beliefs of its citizens. Of course we don't live in anything near an ideal democracy and in a pluralistic society there are few set standards of what is considered moral which is why we run into problems. When a group in a democracy feels that t hey are being imposed on by another group are being imposed on them that is when we get the argument that government shouldn't legislate morality. What that really means is that government shouldn't legislate anything but the most broadly agreed upon morality. In that case I have no problem with government legislating morality since we can all agree that things like murder and rape are immoral and should be stopped and punished with the force of law. Here I would disagree with you because what qualifies as good morals? Also many successful leaders have dictated and even forced morals of their own choosing upon others. For instance Abraham Lincoln forced his moral belief that slavery was wrong onto the South and many in the North. Churchill forced his moral belief that Nazism had to be combatted at all costs even when there were still many in the UK who wanted to negotiate. At the sametime no leader, in a democracy, can long survive unless he has the mandate of the populace. Its true that the populace might not even agree with the moral beliefs of the leader but the mark of a good leader is one that can sway the opinions of the populace to what they believe is right. For instance Lincoln.
I think you have expressed a paradox and dilemma I see very well. I am on the page with you. I could go on and on about this but I will leave with this... James C. Patrick Evidence is mounting that many government programs fail to accomplish all that their advocates had promised. After dipping for a while crime statistics are climbing again. Confidence in the institution of government has sagged. Some people wonder whether government has bitten off more than it can chew. They suspect that Henry Hazlitt came close to the mark when he wrote, "The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do competently." First, however, just what is government? Some of the thinkers who helped lift western civilization into the modern era had pondered the question deeply but it is doubtful that most people ever gave it a thought, either then or now. A look at what students of the subject have written should provide an answer. The Essence of Big Government In a stark cemetery at Mansfield, Missouri, stand two identical gravestones side by side, separated by about six feet of sod. Carved in large letters in the brown granite of one is the name Wilder, of the other, Lane. One marks the graves of Almanzo James and Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second the grave of their daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Almanzo Wilder died in 1949 at the age of ninety-two. His wife lived till 1957 when she was ninety. Rose was almost eighty-two when she died in 1968. A mile east of Mansfield on a pleasant hillside rests the modest white frame house that Almanzo Wilder built for Laura at the turn of the century, using building materials produced on the farm. Here Rose grew to womanhood and here in 1932 her mother began to write the "Little House" books that have charmed a generation of Americans with their picture of pioneer life in the second half of the nineteenth century and have now been adapted for television. Drawing on a descriptive talent developed as a girl when she served as the eyes for her scarlet fever-blinded sister, Laura wrote the series of books in longhand on tablet paper, using both sides of the sheet to avoid waste and writing with a pencil. Rose, too, became a writer and her best-known book, Let the Hurricane Roar, is in part a re-telling in fiction of the pioneer experiences of her mother's family. But her most influential book is The Discovery of Freedom, published in 1943. It takes nothing from Rose Wilder Lane to point out that the book reflects viewpoints and attitudes that are evident in her mother's writing. The Discovery of Freedom was the inspiration for Henry Grady Weaver's The Mainspring of Human Progress, described by Leonard Read, President of the Foundation for Economic Education, as probably the best introduction to freedom ideas available in a single volume. Mainspring has multiplied the outreach and the influence of Rose Wilder Lane's thought. Today and for two generations there has been abroad in the land a naive faith in government as the solution to all problems -a belief in the ability of legislation to satisfy any need. Events in the last decade, when that trust reached its zenith in the Great Society programs, have dealt several stinging blows to the faith but it had become so deeply ingrained that it yields slowly to opposing evidence. Weaver and Mrs. Lane did not share the popular belief. Instead they took a very different view which Rose Wilder Lane expressed in these words: "What they (men in government) have is the use of force -command of the police and the army. Government, The State, is always a use of force . . ."2 And "Buck" Weaver wrote, "In the last analysis, and stripped of all the furbelows, government is nothing more than a legal monopoly of the use of physical force - by persons upon persons."3 What Authorities Say Although most Americans today seem never to have thought of it, this idea was not new. Numerous other writers, representing differing shades in the political spectrum, have expressed a similar view, both before and since Mrs. Lane and "Buck" Weaver wrote. "The civil law ... is the force of the commonwealth, engaged to protect the lives, liberties, and possessions of those who live according to its laws, and has power to take away life, liberty, or goods from him who disobeys." (John Locke) "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master (George Washington) "Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle to injustice." (Frederic Bastiat) ". . . penal sanction . . . is the essence of law (John Stuart Mill) "The essential characteristic of all government, whatever its form, is authority. . . . Government, in its last analysis, is organized force." (Woodrow Wilson) "The state belongs to the sphere of coercion. It would be madness to renounce coercion, particularly in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat." (Nikolai Lenin) "A government may be freely chosen, but it is still not all of us. It is some men vested with authority over other men." And democracy ". . . is a name for a particular set of conditions under which the right to coerce others is acquired and held ."4 (Charles Frankel) "The State is the party that always accompanies its proposals by coercion, and backs them by force."5 (Charles A. Reich) In a book based on his research at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace of Stanford University, Alvin Rabushka wrote, "Governments take resources from the public but use them to maximize their own welfare." The Role for Government If government is force, as the serious students of the subject have agreed, what kinds of things should government do? The answer is obvious. Government should do those things that can be properly done by the use of force. The question follows: What are the proper uses of force among responsible adults? Nobody has answered that question more clearly than the nineteenth century French statesman, Frederic Bastiat: "Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense. It is for this reason that the collective force which is only the organized combination of the individual forces may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose." Government, therefore, is to be used to defend, to protect, to prevent violence, fraud, and other predatory acts. Other endeavors are to be left to the initiative and the choices of people acting voluntarily, either jointly or as individuals. Obviously that is not the direction Americans have been moving for the past two generations. Instead, as noted earlier, a naive faith that government can solve all problems has taken root and persists in spite of the repeated failures of government social programs. But it makes no difference that large numbers hold a wrong view. Right is not determined by majority vote. As Anatole France stated, "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." And Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland said, "A foolish law does not become a wise law because it is approved by a great many people."20 Right, like truth, is usually discerned first by a minority, often in the beginning a minority of one. Everybody Is Responsible Everybody has a stake in preventing the unprincipled members of society from committing acts of violence or fraud upon peaceful persons, and should help pay a part of the cost of the police and defense mechanism necessary to protect people in their peaceful pursuits. Government is society's mechanism for protecting and defending; it properly collects taxes to pay for these services. But when it takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong, government commits an act of plunder. One person who uses force or the threat of force to take from another what has been honestly earned or built or created, commits an immoral act and a crime. Two or more persons banding together do not acquire any moral rights that they did not have as individuals. When government provides benefits for one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime, it performs an act of plunder. Not only is governmental plunder immoral, it reduces the general well-being of the people. It does so by taking away from some people what they have produced but are not permitted to use. It reduces well-being by distributing to other people what they have not been required to produce. Both the producers and the receivers are thus deprived of incentive. And government reduces the general well-being by creating an unproductive administrative bureaucracy to do the taking away and the distributing. Society needs the productivity of all its able members. Shifted to producing goods and services that can be exchanged in the marketplace, the legions of bureaucrats could add materially to human well-being. How is the situation to be corrected that has been allowed to develop? Rose Wilder Lane points the way: "The great English reform movement of the 19th century consisted wholly in repealing laws." What is needed in the United States is to repeal laws, not to pass new ones. Repeal laws that vest some men with authority over other men. This is not to set the clock back, it is to set it right. Well, alot could be said, it is just something to think about. The more moral, responsible and self controlled individuals are the less they need to be governed by force. Our city spent millions of dollars on a war on drugs. The problem grew worse. A group of citizens in one drug neighborhood met and took actions to take responsibility for their children, the playgrounds, the school and they shut down the crack houses and confronted the dealers. The drug problem went away in a very short time in this neighborhood with little money spent and the whole of the people were all the better for it. Should government force morality? Thanks this has all been food for my thought.
I agree that SC has done a good job of summarizing the issue. I don’t see the paradox though. Should a community be allowed to establish moral standards for that community? Should we have any kind of government at all since almost any act of government will have a moral component? Anyone short of an anarchist will likely say yes to both of these questions. Think of a church community or a school community, for example. Standards are set at a community level in both, and yet the individuals still have an infinite number of personal moral decisions to make too. In neither case is a member allowed to come a community gathering nude, for example. Should government (in this case the governing bodies of these institutions) force morality by requiring people to keep their closes on? Again, I’m sure there are a few anarchists who would say that they should not, but most I think understand that humans live collectively in communities and that community standards and decisions are not only ok but that they are good and even essential things. This article is a bizarre, however. Do government programs operate at 100% efficiency? Of course not. Neither does any other organisation or individual in the world. That vague reference to crime statistics is either deliberately misleading or astonishingly simple minded. Is the author suggesting that the only possible cause for rising crime rates is a failure of government programs? What about the impact of the economy? What about the breakdown in the social fabric of communities as more parents get caught up in the worship of mammon and lose contact with family and community values? We could develop a long list of influencing factors and yet this author would have you believe that it’s all about “the government.” And again, in a democracy the government is us, and if it’s not doing what we want it to do then it’s our responsibility to change it. Anytime you here a line like this be on your guard. It’s a meaningless phrase. Bigger than what? What is small government? It’s often used as a meaningless slur and as a trick to influence the mind of the reader without any real substance to back it up. And what’s with the off topic story in the middle of this piece? I don’t get it. Was that some kind of filler?! I clipped it out as I don’t see how it relates to anything else in the piece. If anyone believes that the government is the solution to all problems and/or if they believe that it somehow works magically without their input and the input of their fellow citizens then that is a problem. I think this is another deceptive trick by the author, though. “There has been abroad in the land a naive faith in government as the solution to all problems.” Admittedly half of your electorate has become so detached from it’s democracy that it doesn’t even bother to vote anymore, but I can’t believe that there would be more than a handful of people who would believe such a thing as this. I suspect that people have given up on your system because it doesn’t elect people who are representative of the general population. It only elects the wealthy people who can afford to run, and wealthy is all too often associated with a worship of mammon, not a high valuing of people or of community relationships and community standards. Yes, the government is about force. It is an instrument of the people used to perform certain tasks for the people, and in order to do something you have to have the power to do it. In order to pound that nail into the wall of that new school you need to first have the nail, and then the hammer, and then the person to pound it (or operate the nail gun as the case may be ), and you need the land, and you need a police force to patrol the area to keep the children safe, etc. etc. etc. The government needs money and authorisation and enough power to be able to do almost everything it does, and it needs power to stop people from doing some things too. But it’s power is only what we give to it in order for it to do what we have directed it to do, so ultimately we, in a democracy, have the power. We are responsible. These last 2 paragraphs are very deceptive and misleading. At this point I’m wondering what the author’s hidden agenda is. Of course government is power, but that’s not to say that the only kind of power it has or should use is for organised self-defence. Unbelievably the author is quoting Woodrow Wilson, whose administration passed all kinds of progressive trade legislation, and using it to conclude that governmental power should only be used for self-defence! Not many if any of the other people he’s quoted would support in any way his conclusion either. This author is an unscrupulous, manipulative individual who is leading you astray, rhester. (And who the heck is Nikolai Lenin? Is he related to Vladimir Ilich Lenin somehow?) Wow. There is no “therefore”. He’s drawing false conclusions based on completely faulty evidence and gross misrepresentations of the positions of a number of great thinkers. This author is a liar and a manipulator rhester. I don’t think you can draw any other conclusion. You shouldn't place any weight in this at all. I don’t know what his agenda is but those who attack our democrat institutions are generally either survivalist kooks or people who are associated with power blocks that would like to have more power relative to the will of the people, like corporations or other old boys networks. These people by definition do not work for the best interests of the people and this is why they are in conflict with the government. Wow! He repeats his faulty conclusions and then extends them to suggest that school taxes and therefore pubic schools, for example, are immoral! This is someone who obviously couldn’t care less about his society or the people around him and instead has chosen to worship mammon. He has concocted a completely dishonest and manipulative piece that looks like nothing more than an attempt to justify cutting taxes at he expense of the less fortunate. I find that simply morally repugnant, and I think it comes pretty close to being evil. Wow! and double wow!! I guess it doesn’t need to be said at this point but this is as anti-Christian as it gets. He’s gone past the point of saying that it’s wrong for the government to help the less fortunate to saying that it’s wrong to help them at all. “It reduces the general well-being of the people. It does so by taking away from some people what they have produced but are not permitted to use. It reduces well-being by distributing to other people what they have not been required to produce.” Christ gave to the poor, and he instructed us to do the same. Christ gave his life on the cross for the people of the world, and yet this guy won’t give 2 cents to the less fortunate... This is evil. This piece is evil personified. Christ will say on judgement day, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” (see below for full passage) and this guy has said in no uncertain terms that he thinks it’s wrong to give Christ, by giving to his less fortunate people, anything. This piece is a promotion of the worship of mammon and an absolute denial of Christ and all he stands for. The absolute lack of even the most basic Christian charity is stunning. This piece is pure evil, and I can’t understand why you would post it rhester. From Matthew 25: The Sheep and the Goats 31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' 37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' 40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' 41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' 44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' 45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' 46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt 25&version=31
I don't want to say you are over reacting because I understand the heart of your comment. The scripture you posted is what I have been trying to say. You and I have a personal moral responsibility. It is as simple as asking yourself if you love people enough to do these things Jesus is speaking of. Whether the government passes laws that are enforcing Matthew 25 :31-46 is debatable and only relevant to those in government who will be held accoutable for their own moral choice. These scriptures are written for Grizzled and Rhester; you and I need to ask ourselves if this is how we treat the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and prisoners. Christ's kingdom is in the heart of a Christian, not the Congress. I thought we were on the same page, but I just can't say it simply enough. As others have pointed out I don't need a law to tell me whether I can pray or not. I am not bothered when government passes laws that lagislate morality. I was asking is this the primary function of government? I personally don't believe government changes the heart of man and legislation doesn't relieve your individual responsibility to live Christ's command morally and ethically. Your reaction raises important questions. Government has a Biblical function- (NLT) Romans 13:1-7 Obey the government, for God is the one who put it there. All governments have been placed in power by God. 2So those who refuse to obey the laws of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow. 3For the authorities do not frighten people who are doing right, but they frighten those who do wrong. So do what they say, and you will get along well. 4The authorities are sent by God to help you. But if you are doing something wrong, of course you should be afraid, for you will be punished. The authorities are established by God for that very purpose, to punish those who do wrong. 5So you must obey the government for two reasons: to keep from being punished and to keep a clear conscience. 6Pay your taxes, too, for these same reasons. For government workers need to be paid so they can keep on doing the work God intended them to do. 7Give to everyone what you owe them: Pay your taxes and import duties, and give respect and honor to all to whom it is due. I respect the authority of government. I find government a poor vehicle to establish righteousness, grace, truth and love in the human heart. Big government is just a term to define the extent government exercise control over the choices and freedoms people have. Small government means that you have more individual responsiblity and freedom of choice. It is our individual choices that determine our character and reveal our personal morals. Freedom of moral choice for an individual will lead to responsible living or destruction. We reap what we sow because God's moral's are truth. We can try to circumvent this process- but not for ever. Grizzled, if you think I am advocating ignoring the poor and needy you know nothing of my life. If you think I am against any assistance from govenment that some less fortunate person recieves you understand nothing of my posts. I am grateful for everything that truly helps people. My questions are rhetorical. If you believe what the government is doing is necessary then I am sure you do far more yourself. A moral conviction is just that- how we really live our lives. Continue to go visit those in the hospital, clothe the naked and feed the hungry, I am sure you are doing these good works for the Lord because you are following Him and yielded to His word and His Spirit. On this I am confident we are on the same page. Our government may believe it has the responsibility to solve the world's problems. I believe Jesus is the answer. I am no anarchist. God ordains government. Every law has a moral principle behind it. Who's morals? That is another topic to debate.
Just read this today, interesting - True Foreign Aid May 1, 2006 A recent Hudson Institute study found that, last year, American citizens voluntarily contributed three times more to help people overseas than did the United States government. This should not surprise us at all, as Americans are generous to those in need, whether here or abroad. There are so many moral, religious, and human reasons to help our fellow men and women in need. It is only when government gets in the way and tries to crowd out private charity that problems arise. There are good reasons why the US Constitution does not allow our government to send taxpayer money overseas as foreign aid. One of the best is that coerced “charity” is not charity at all, but rather it is theft. If someone picks your pocket and donates the money to a good cause it does not negate the original act of theft. There are also practical reasons to oppose governmental foreign aid. Though it may be given with the best intentions, government agencies simply cannot do the kind of job that private charities do in actually helping people in need. Government-to-government assistance seldom helps those really in need. First, because it comes from governments it usually has political strings attached to it, and as such is really a cover for political interventionism. Take our own National Endowment for Democracy for example. The “aid” money it spends is usually spent trying to manipulate elections overseas so that a favored foreign political party wins “democratic” elections. This does no favor to citizens of foreign countries, who vote in the hope that they may choose their own leaders without outside interference. Likewise with the so-called Millennium Challenge Account, which sends US aid to countries that meet US-determined economic reform criteria. The fact is, countries that enact solid economic policies will attract many times the amount of private foreign investment on international capital markets than they receive through the Millennium Challenge program. Another problem is that when a government gives aid to another government there are so many layers of middlemen involved that by the time the actual aid trickles down to those in need it is a small fraction of the original amount given. Not to mention that much of this aid finds its way into the pockets of corrupt foreign leaders. Private assistance organizations, on the other hand, are more subject to market forces and thus much more effective. When Americans feel motivated to part with their hard-earned money to help someone overseas, they want to make sure it goes only to the most effective charities. Bad news travels fast, and private charities are unlikely to send their resources where they are likely to be wasted because their contributions would soon dry up. We all recall what happened several years ago when it was revealed that the top management of a major charity organization was paid extremely high salaries: people stopped sending money. The problem corrected itself. Sadly, this does not happen when government aid is mismanaged. More often than not, the very government agencies that mismanaged the assistance in the first place come back to Congress for a budget increase to solve the problem they created. So we should be happy to hear that Americans are willing to give so much to help those less fortunate in foreign lands. And we should think hard about all the good we could do both at home and abroad if our government did not take so much from us for its ineffective and wasteful foreign aid priorities. True charity is never coerced. link
Again, in a democracy the government represents the will of the people, and if it doesn’t then there is a problem with the democracy. “We the people.” When we vote we need to take moral responsibility for who and what we are voting for. This is something even the Christian right acknowledges, although they all to often twist Christian morality to suit their worldly ambitions. Yes, those scriptures are for us individually, but that responsibility extends to who and what we support in our governments and government policies. You obligation to be a moral person does not stop when you enter the ballot booth or speak to public policy. In a democracy we are the government, and the people who manage it for us are our “public servants.” But also as discussed above, government policies are merely a practical way of implementing community decisions. We’ve talked about schools but let’s boil it down to a streetlight. Not everyone drives so why should the government take money from everyone to build a stop light for only those who own and drive cars? The problem with the Patrick article is that he selectively isolates the less fortunate. Things like roads and stop lights and schools and parks benefit him and his family, so he’s not saying a word about them. Instead he’s selectively picking programs for the poor to attack, which is why I said that his article is anti-Christian to the point of being evil. I agree that we can’t rely only on the government to be our instrument to deliver charity. If you know Ivan Illich and Jurgen Habermas they both speak to this point, although is somewhat different contexts. Direct contact and personal charity is essential, but that does not mean that we should throw the efficiencies of collective charity and/or government administration out the window, (and there more reasons than charity to help the disadvantaged, as we’ve discussed). We could say that governments shouldn’t be in the business of building traffic lights and that citizens should volunteer to stand in the middle of our roads and direct Houston’s traffic, but this is clearly not efficient and hurts everyone in the long run. The very same reasoning applies to social programs. On one key level there is no difference at all. So why would Patrick pick on poor people instead of traffic lights? I call that evil. In many if not most ways they are a poor vehicle to establish righteousness, grace, truth and love in the human heart, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t have their place and don’t form an efficient and important part of doing the above. If all one was doing was working overtime so they could pay for all the waste and inefficiency that a system of only private programs would result in, then you wouldn’t have any time to actually spend with people. If you were to go out every night directing traffic instead of letting the government install traffic lights, and building a park instead of letting the government do that, and being a volunteer teacher at the community run school instead of letting a government run the school system, then you wouldn’t have any time to visit and pay people’s bills in hospitals. That world view just doesn’t make sense from any standpoint I can see. As we’ve discussed in this thread the huge efficiencies of universal government run programs make them the vehicle of choice in many cases. And note that there is little difference to the individual if he is paying his taxes or merely cutting a check to a private aid agency. We are told that love is what counts in giving anything to God, else we are merely a “resounding gong” or perhaps merely a compliant Pharisee. If you have a heart for the people then you will support the best programs for them, government or otherwise. If someone wants to hurt the poor just so they can cut a check to a private aid agency in order to make themselves feel more generous then they need to have a hard look a their motives. If someone wants to help the disadvantaged then they should want to do that the best way possible. They should go spend some time with them and if they think the government money isn’t being spent wisely then they should lobby for change. Be an advocate. Abolishing government programs on principle makes no sense. And Patrick’s piece is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on the poor. What is the purpose of government after all? Think about why people have established pacts and agreements with their governing bodies over the years, and then started electing them directly. Patrick’s claims become wildly ridiculous when you think about what good governments are expected to do for their people. He seems to be suggesting that they should play no part in managing trade or the economy, for example. On the one hand he talks like an anarchist, but when you look at where the specifics of his attack fall they fall on the disadvantaged. So his is not a statement of principle. He is prepared to take his handouts without complaining. It is instead a deceitful but specific attack on the disadvantaged. My point was that these are relative terms. Big and small only makes sense in comparison to something. The countries with the highest quality of life ratings as a rule have much bigger governments than the US government, for example. So was he using the word to mean something or was it just a general scare word or a tribal mantra that he was throwing out? It is our relationship with God that governs the nature of our actions. The actions themselves merely flow from the fruit of the spirit. They are a natural and inevitable sign of a healthy relationship with God. Actions can also be taken in merely a compliant manner, however, and this is a different thing entirely. See Matthew 7: 21-23. I don’t think you are against helping the needy, but I can’t even begin to guess why you would post an article like the Patrick one that specifically states that the needy should not be helped, by the government or otherwise. Maybe he was temporarily insane when he wrote that, but Jesus himself in Matthew 25 speaks directly to what that piece said in suggesting that the poor should not be helped. 45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' 46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." If you have so completely lost faith in your government that you think it no longer represents or can represent the will of the people then that is a real problem. If you are right then the US is no longer a democracy. Perhaps the US is really an oligarchy of the rich. That would explain why, even though it costs 30% less as a percentage of GDP and yet covers 100% of the people, your government still hasn’t implemented a single payer, government run, health care system. I believe the US is the only first world country not to have one. But the solution is not to go backwards and abolish government. The solution is to make government more representative of the people and responsive to the will of the people. Things like elections spending limits and free or cheap air time for candidates would be a good place to start.
I now think we are on the same page again. Thanks, I certainly appreciate all the government does to help people. I wish here in the U.S. they were accountable to the will of the people. I have lost faith in our government. (But not in a God who governs the nations; I pray for our leaders) My faith has been placed solidly in another person, Jesus Christ. Thanks for your posts.
I had a thought that might influence this discussion. The only way you could have a government that doesn't legislate morality on some level would be a society of angels. Barring that there needs to be some mechanism for enforcing societal norms and maintaining a peacable society and government is pretty much the only way we have of doing that.
