Broken Not Crushed living life as a statement, not an apology

Health-care reform proponents and foes will continue to talk past each other until they address this central, underlying principle: whether or not one’s need constitutes a claim on someone else’s resources.

The assumption that it does undergirds all the talk of public aid, whether foreign aid, food stamps, health care, SSI, etc.

And it’s both immoral and ineffective.

If I lose my job, I would never think of pounding on my neighbor’s door and demanding that he pay my bills. Yet we believe it’s OK to do just that, as long as it’s filtered through a government agency.

Need does not equal right to take. If you grant that it does, the coercion will simply grow bigger and bigger, as more and more needs become rights. How often have you heard the language “right to healthcare” or “right to living wage”?

And as long as there are people who have what other people need, there will be a pool of victims, waiting to be coerced out of what belongs to them.

This is NOT what Jesus had in mind, when He commands us to care for the poor and to look out for our neighbor. Nowhere is it coerced. And nowhere is it done through government.

To care for your neighbors, you’ve got to get to know them. Hard to do when the government gives your money to people you’ve never seen.

You’ve got to be involved in their lives. It’s hard to be motivated to do this when you know their needs will met whether you care or not.

You’ve got to own responsibility for the community you live in, something very difficult to do when you know your resources are already being taken away from you and given away to those in need. (This also implies a free choice on your part, to love and to care for your neighbors, rather than coercion, which necessarily arises from government mandate.)

You must help tailor unique solutions to problems, something not possible with a government program that treats its recipients equally.

The principle of subsidiarity, that human affairs are best handled at the lowest possible level, lies at the heart of Jesus’ social teachings: neighbor, family, friend, church, community.

Until we as a society jettison the morality of need, and replace it with personal responsibility, we will never see peoples’ need truly met.

For more on this topic, see:

Investors.com – Memo To Foes Of Health Reform: Repudiate The Morality Of Need.