The Morality of Forced Compassion
by Steve Farrell (Nevada)
A fundamental principle of obtaining support for any political cause,
regardless of true intent, is to insure the attachment of moral
imperatives. From the simplest laws such as traffic laws which favor the
protection of life, or laws against theft which favor the protection of
private property, to the more complex sets of laws such as abortion laws
which pit freedom of choice against the right to life, moral imperatives
abound.
Moral issues excite emotions, attract supporters, and are hard to
defeat if they are intelligently and persuasively packaged.
Ironically, even communism’s leaders and their liberal bedfellows,
representing a school of thought which denies the existence of God and
Virtue and which strategically scolds Christian conservatives for
attempts to uphold traditional morality, can’t seem to resist the
temptation to dangle the lure of Christian compassion as justification
for the forced redistribution of the wealth.
Moreover, if one dare oppose them, then they, for all time, brand the
free thinking dissident with a scarlet S for selfish, a G for
greedy, and an U for uncompassionate.
Yet, forced charity, is an oxymoron. It declares null and void
all the rest of the Decalogue in its blind pursuit of magnanimity and
equality. How, for instance, can one force charity without legalizing,
against the command of God, plunder? Or how shall recipients receiving
goods over a course of years as a legal right rather than through an act
of love, not find themselves summoned by the law to a life of
covetousness? And how is it that imposing economic equality regardless
of individual effort will not undermine the command to “earn [our]
bread by the sweat of [our] brow?”
It is as if the other commands of God have ceased, just because the
Legislator God says so. Ben Franklin, commenting on the same added:
“To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring
with the Deity: it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for
laziness, and supports for folly, may we not be found fighting against
the order of God and Nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery
as the proper punishments for, and cautions against, as well as
necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance?”
A provocative question, and dare we risk the hazard of lightly
passing over it, he warns: “Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of
Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had
need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good.”
Has not the contrast of the world’s freest and most prosperous
nation with the world wide curse of communism proven his point? Could it
possibly be that one of the reasons free market solutions are almost
always superior to government solutions is precisely because they
operate consistently with the law of the Harvest, which permits people,
communities, and nations to reap as they sow? While, isn’t true, that
more harm than good is the highest achievement government welfare will
ever attain?
Beyond these objections, the ultimate result of forced benevolence is
that it inhibits “true spontaneous benevolence.”
Call it the Scrooge affect. For are we not, as taxpayers, inclined to
answer appeals for a “slight provision for the poor and destitute,”
as did Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, by bellowing:
“Are there no prisons...[are there no] Workhouses...[and are not]
the Treadmill and the Poor Law in full vigor...?”
For do not we, like Scrooge, “help to support [those]
establishments?” And isn’t it true that “they cost enough,” and
so we tend to believe that those “who are badly off must go there?”
Sadly, this happens; but little wonder. When the state becomes the
instrument of compassion it is natural for the rich, whom Robin Hood
robbed, to become detached from the poor, if not judgmental and
bitter at those who lobby for more.
This then is the morality of forced compassion. It is the morality of
the left - a system of values which tramples true religion, while
fanatically holding up their “own” religion as true, and what a
religion it is! A religion so skewed and full of contradictions that it
would legalize plunder, legitimize covetousness, undermines the work
ethic, wage war on the Law of the Harvest, and crush true benevolence.
It is a facade of human kindness draped over a hammer and sickle, and
whenever it remains unmasked, a host of people in search of a good cause
unwittingly embrace it with zeal, having little understanding that the
God they worship, whose name is the State, will one day pull off its
mask and return the favor, with a clutch not a hug, and with claws not
hands
