Thomas Sowell on the "Hunger Hoax"

Here is an interesting piece by Thomas Sowell on the "Hunger Hoax" (credit to Shawn Ritenour for pointing me to the article). Sowell sees it as a symptom of a bigger problem:
"An arrogant elite's condescension toward the people — treating them as children who have to be jollied along — is one of the poisonous problems of our time. It is at the heart of the nanny state and the promotion of a debilitating dependency that wins votes for politicians while weakening a society.

Those who see social problems as requiring high-minded people like themselves to come down from their Olympian heights to impose their superior wisdom on the rest of us, down in the valley, are behind such things as the hunger hoax, which is part of the larger poverty hoax."

I can see applications to the "childhood obesity epidemic" as well. We are all individuals and we all have the God-given ability to think for ourselves. To assume that the government must do something about peoples' problems, must help them to change their habits, the way they think, is demeaning. Some people may make poor decisions, but they are individuals with freedom and they should be allowed to make those choices for themselves. The role the government has taken in helping these people should belong to private charities only. They cannot force someone to change (though neither can the government), but if someone shows the inclination to change charities can help him to make a start and follow through.

Lessons from The Blind Side

My wife and I watched the movie The Blind Side on Saturday night. The movie is funny, well-acted, and very emotionally moving. It is the true story of how a wealthy white family adopted a destitute black teenager from inner city Memphis. That destitute kid, Michael Oher, made the Dean's List at Ole Miss and is now an NFL star. Two things struck me as I watched the movie. First, the pain and tragedy of Michael's childhood. He never knew his father, and his mother was a crack addict who had a dozen children, apparently all with different fathers. He was essentially homeless at age 15 when the Tuohy family picked him up on the side of the road, wearing nothing but a t-shirt & shorts on a cold night. Watching the scenes in the movie where Mrs. Tuohy meets Michael's mom and where Michael tells Mrs. Tuohy he wants to stay with them will tug at your heart strings.

The other thing that struck me about the movie was the genuine Christian faith of the Tuohy family. To bring a virtually unknown 15-year-old kid to stay in your house from off the street takes both compassion and courage, and the Tuohys had plenty of both. The movie makes clear that this compassion and courage was a result of their evangelical Christianity, and it is surprising and refreshing to watch a Hollywood film that paints believers in a positive light rather than ridiculing them. Because of the Tuohys' intervention, Michael's life was transformed. Without them, he would likely have continued the rest of his life in poverty and hopelessness; thanks to their love and support, he was able to achieve greatness.

I don't think there's a government program on earth that could have transformed Michael's life in that way. One loving family did more for him than tens of thousands of welfare payments could ever do. That doesn't mean that I think we should eliminate welfare or other social programs for the poor. But those programs have not eliminated poverty, and they will never do so. And ironically, some of the cities that spend the most on social programs for the poor have some of the worst problems with homelessness and addiction (like San Francisco, which spends an average of $130,000 per homeless person without any appreciable reduction in homelessness levels). A well-designed government program to help the poor can provide needy people with their most basic needs while encouraging them to help themselves and take responsibility. But I think what truly destitute people need to enable them to get out of poverty is a personal connection -- individual people to demonstrate love, compassion, and help tailored to their specific situation. They don't need just money; they need a change in their thinking, habits, and lifestyle. Large government bureaucracies can't do that very well. That is why individuals and private non-profit charities are usually much more efficient and effective at helping the poor than the government is. Ask victims of Hurricane Katrina who helped them more: FEMA or church groups and other private volunteers!

I think this provides a challenge for us as individuals. What are we doing to help people around us in need? What are our churches doing to show compassion to those who need it the most? It also provides us with a needed caution. Let us not confuse real compassion with politicians spending other people's tax dollars on bloated bureaucracies that do more to encourage laziness and government dependence than to provide lasting help.

Compassion & Government

My pastor preached an excellent sermon yesterday on Jesus' parable about the Good Samaritan and emphasized our responsibility to show compassion and generosity to the poor. It was an important reminder for me to make sure that I am not closing my eyes and my heart to the needs of people all around me and that I am willing to give to others as the Lord has given to me. It also got me thinking about how this principle of Christian compassion relates to political issues, such as ObamaCare.

I don't have time to write much on this topic now. But I think it is often very problematic to take biblical commands directed to individuals about compassion & charity and attempt to apply them directly to the government. Don't get me wrong -- the government must stand for justice, and so obviously it must take action to prevent corruption and oppression of the poor. But government charity is something entirely different -- that is the government taking some people's money and giving it as a handout to another group of people. I'm not saying I'm against some sort of safety net for truly needy people. I'm not opposed to programs like welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid -- provided that there are incentives built into those programs to encourage people who are able to take responsibility for their own lives to do so. In the case of medical care -- we need to look and see who are the people without health insurance who really need it and what can be done to get targeted help to those people.

The problem is that government is a massive nameless, faceless collection of bureaucrats that cannot see people as individuals and cannot target help to their specific needs. Therefore it cannot really show true compassion in a biblical sense. Despite their sanctimonious attitude, politicians are not being compassionate by spending other people's money to help the poor. Government generally establishes a "one-size-fits-all" government program that operates inefficiently and wastes taxpayer money without really helping the people it is supposed to help. So much of poverty in this country today is really encouraged by the government. People become dependent on the government to take care of them and don't take responsibility for their own lives. Many people in this country today feel they have a "right" to certain things (a good job, health care, education, etc.) but they are not willing to work hard to get those things. They think these things should be guaranted for all by the government. And this situation creates anger among people who have worked hard and taken responsibility for their own lives, only to find increasing amounts of their hard-earned money taken from them in taxes to give to others who have not worked for it. The more extensive this wealth redistribution becomes, the fewer incentives people have to work hard and the less free, responsible, and productive a society becomes. France and the Scandinavian countries are excellent examples of this.

In the case of ObamaCare, I think compassion is only the ostensible motive. The real motive is increased government power, which explains why Obama & Congress have been so deceitful on the details of the plan and have worked so hard to push something quickly under the radar of public scrutiny. If 80% of Americans are generally happy with the quality of our country's health care system, there is no reason to do a radical overhaul of the whole system. There should simply be small, incremental changes made to try to lower costs and help the neediest people. The fact that Obama and Congress are instead pushing for radical, comprehensive changes that a majority of Americans oppose speaks volumes about their real, more sinister intentions.