want to share an essay I just read

[Azazello1313]

 

a most eloquent expression of an idea that goes right to the heart of my own ideas about politics and public ethics.

[Ursa Majoris]

I was pretty sure reading this that I'd find the following phrase:

 

However, the state is taking over many of the functions that were previously performed by charities -- not least education, health care, and the relief of poverty.

 

and, naturally, there it was, the lamentation that the state has taken over charity. Does anyone - anyone at all - seriously think charity can substitute for government in any one of education, health care or poverty relief, never mind all three? It's beyond ridiculous wishful thinking. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of sheer scale.

 

If anyone DOES really believe this, please tell me why charities are struggling to remain afloat right now, never mind begin to replace the government.

[Azazello1313]

If anyone DOES really believe this, please tell me why charities are struggling to remain afloat right now, never mind begin to replace the government.

 

from the essay:

 

There is an interesting contrast here between the English-speaking culture and the culture of the European continent. Figures for private charitable giving for 2006 showed the United States at the top of the list, with charitable gifts from individuals and private companies amounting to 1.67 percent of GDP; Britain was a long way behind, but nevertheless second on the list with charitable giving at 0.73 percent of GDP. Canada was in third place, followed by South Africa and the Republic of Ireland. Germany and France were way down the list at 0.22 percent and 0.14 percent respectively, and Italy and Spain were off the map altogether. Countries with strong gift-giving routines may be very poor at charitable giving, and conversely countries with strong private charities may be suspicious of the privatization of public life that occurs when gift-giving takes precedence over contract and law.

...

the state deals on impersonal and equal terms with its citizens. It has no favorites, and it is governed by the rules -- anything else is received by the citizens as an injustice. Hence charity is replaced by justice as the ruling principle upon which social benefits are distributed. But while charity deals in gifts, justice deals in rights. And when you receive what is yours by right you don't feel grateful. Hence people who receive their education and health care from the state are less inclined to give to schools and hospitals in their turn -- something that is borne out vividly by the figures concerning charitable giving. The spirit of gratitude retreats from the social experience, and in countries like France and Germany, where civil society is penetrated at every level by the state, people give little or nothing to charity, and regard gifts with suspicion, as attempts to privatize what should be a matter of public and impartial concern.

 

When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment. Since you are queuing on equal terms with the competition, you will begin to think of the special conditions that entitle you to a greater, a speedier, or a more effective share. You will be always one step from the official complaint, the court action, the press interview, and the snarling reproach against Them, the ones who owed you this right and also withheld it. That is the way European society is going, and American society may one day follow it. Agape, the contagious gentleness between people, survives only where there is a habit of giving. Take away gift, and agape gives way to the attitude that Nietzsche called ressentiment, the vigilant envy of others, and the desire to take from them what I  but not they have a right to.

 

Moreover, ingratitude grows in proportion to the benefits received. When those good things, like food, shelter, education, for which our ancestors had to struggle, are offered as rights, and without cost or effort, then they are "taken for granted," as the saying is, which means quite the opposite from "taken as gifts." In such conditions there arises what we might call a culture of ingratitude -- one that does not merely forget to give thanks, but regards thanks as somehow demeaning, a confession of weakness, a way of according to the other person an importance that he does not have. This thanklessness is growing around us today. It is written on the faces of pop idols and sports stars; it is announced in all kinds of ways by the media and by our political representatives. And it is one reason for the radical decline in public standards. Politicians are unlikely to behave as they should when they feel that they are acting on behalf of an entirely thankless public.

 

can you with a straight face deny that this is true? it not an absolutist argument, but an incrementalist one. it doesn't say that government can't or shouldn't have any role in the things you mention. it just points out some of the effects. effects that grow more problematic and pervasive the more the "rights" culture supercedes the gratitude culture. and it not only dampens gratitude on the receiving end, but generosity on the giving end. if charity is indeed dying here, as it apparently has to a great extent in continental europe, it is just another indication of the direction in which we are heading. and here you use that as a rationale to go further in that direction.

[Ursa Majoris]

from the essay:

 

 

 

can you with a straight face deny that this is true? it not an absolutist argument, but an incrementalist one. it doesn't say that government can't or shouldn't have any role in the things you mention. it just points out some of the effects. effects that grow more problematic and pervasive the more the "rights" culture supercedes the gratitude culture. and it not only dampens gratitude on the receiving end, but generosity on the giving end. if charity is indeed dying here, as it apparently has to a great extent in continental europe, it is just another indication of the direction in which we are heading. and here you use that as a rationale to go further in that direction.

I'm doing no such thing. I'm pointing out that the argument (and Perch has repeatedly made this exact point) that government should give way to charity is simply impossible because of the sheer scale. If business wasn't so interested in squeezing the very last buck out of every last person, perhaps you wouldn't have so much to complain about. Perhaps there wouldn't have to be so many social programs, perhaps there wouldn't have to be so many food stamps, perhaps there wouldn't have to be emergency aid for people thrown out of their homes.

In order to avoid an all-pervasive welfare state a la Europe, how about the corporations (now defined by the SCOTUS as real American people in their own right) behaving a little more like real American people?

[evil_gop_liars]

Did Fran Tarkenton write this rubbish?