In an amazing recent story, the thorough
rottenness of the statist system of handouts was evident for all the world to
see. Turns out that many European
terrorists were making their living off the government dole - fed, clothed
& sheltered by the poor victims they eventually killed.
Of course, ISIS unabashedly instructs the
terrorists they are inserting into the West to grab whatever ‘welfare’ they can
from the stupid Western democracies.
This they eagerly did, with some garnering tens
of thousands of dollars from various taxpayer-funded relief programs.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a top
Belgian official “called the notion that the country’s welfare system is
subsidizing terrorism an ‘offensive intellectual shortcut.’”
Well, well.
If this is offensive, what do you call having suicide bombers blow you
up after you have handed them the resources it took for them to plot and hatch
their deadly scheme?
This kind of obliviousness in the ‘elite’ of
Western countries has resulted in the public’s almost total distrust and open
disdain for the ability and common sense of their leaders.
The exposure of such deep and obvious flaws in
the statist welfare schemes suggests it may be time to reboot our thinking of
what welfare is truly all about.
For starters, the Christian idea of welfare is
voluntary almsgiving to the poor, the widows and the children. When done
through the Church, the needy are relieved while the undeserving poor are not. This
being the crucial difference between Christian charity and secular charity –
the former discriminates and the latter does not. For as Paul says, “…that if any would not
work, neither should he eat.” The whole point is to lift the needy out of their
poverty to where they are no longer dependent, creating in them the disciplines
necessary to be self-reliant. Of course, there are always some that require
permanent assistance due to their inability to help themselves but, the vast
bulk of the people receiving welfare today are capable.
On the other hand, the anti-Christian state
wants all welfare done by themselves without regard for morals, as this recent
exposure makes obvious. This is so that they keep their hands on the levers of
power, thus casting a materialistic and tenebrific patina on the whole process,
victimizing, oppressing and denigrating those who need help, keeping them down
so they are always dependent on their superiors.
Charity is certainly virtuous but charity is
just as certainly voluntary. There is no virtue in the government coercing tax
monies from the productive people and giving it to their favorites, whether
needy or not, whether terrorists or not.
After all, the Good Samaritan did not use
government funds.