Forced compassion
When I was living in the U.S. mainland, I used to watch a great deal of public television. My favorite shows included “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser” and “The MacLaughin Group.” I also enjoyed assorted history specials, documentaries, and British comedies. And, as anyone who watches public television on a regular basis knows, despite the limited commercial advertising, they constantly make impassioned pleas for donations.
Yet, as much as I enjoyed many of the educational PBS programs, I never contributed one red cent to public television. Don’t get me wrong. I was no free-loader. On the contrary, the way I figured it: my federal tax dollars (Social Security at least) were probably already paying for it.
This is the way I feel about donations or charitable contributions in general: why bother? The government–federal, state, and local–has already taken it upon itself to take some of your hard-earned money and exercise compassion on your behalf.
Make no mistake about it: When politicians speak of compassion, they are essentially speaking of forced compassion. They are speaking of taking money from some groups of people and giving it to others, regardless of the individual’s direct personal choice or consent in the matter.
This may be considered a cynical view, but I believe it is entirely rational. After all, true compassion should be entirely voluntary, never forced. As long as the government is sponsoring coerced compassion, why bother to be genuinely compassionate? Let the government enforce compassion.
Now this attitude might seem somewhat greedy, selfish, and mean-spirited to most people; but the Catholic Church itself apparently seems to strongly agree with it. Merely consider the fact that many Catholic leaders–including the Holy Father, the Pope himself–wholeheartedly support the welfare state.
Why do you suppose Catholic Church leaders support the welfare state? It should be rather obvious by now: to reduce their compassion burden, of course.
When the welfare state takes care of the poor and the unfortunate, the Catholic Church’s compassion burden is alleviated. They are then free to build extravagant Churches and use their income and assets for other purposes. They get to keep more of their donations.
Which is why I will personally never make a donation to the Catholic Church as long as its leaders openly call for the expansion of the socialized welfare state. We simply should not subsidize their political support for forced government compassion. It is their job to be compassionate, not the government’s. Compassion should be completely privatized.
