6. GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS CROWD OUT THE MORE EFFECTIVE WORK OF PRIVATE CHARITY

A paper by Daniel Hungerman of the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrates the precipitous decline in church-based private charity to benefit the needy as government aid expenditures increased more than six-fold from 1933 to 1939. In “Faith-Based Charity and Crowd Out During the Great Depression” he shows that in 1926, congregations invested vastly more ($150 million) on these charities than federal, state and local agencies combined ($60 million at most). With the rise in New Deal expenditures, each dollar of government-relief spending in a state led to between three-and-seven cents less church spending. Since overall federal investment dwarfed the charitable investment (by a ratio of more than 10 to 1) this meant a significant reduction – an estimated 30% -- in the amount devoted by churches to helping the poor.

In “The Tragedy of American Compassion” (1992), Marvin Olasky of the University of Texas explores numerous reasons that private charities function more effectively to uplift the poor. For instance, “A century ago, when individuals applied for material assistance, charity volunteers tried first to ‘restore family ties that have been sundered’ and ‘reabsorb in social life those who for some reason have snapped the threads that bound them to other members of the community.’ Instead of immediately offering help, charities asked, ‘Who is bound to help in this case?” This approach of course discouraged the extension of poverty as a semi-permanent status passed on from one generation to another. As Olasky maintains, faith-based and private aid organizations also maintained the crucial ability to make distinctions between “deserving” and “self-destructive” poor. “Charities a century ago realized that two persons in exactly the same material circumstances, but with different values, need different treatment. One might benefit most from some material help and a pat on the back, the other might need spiritual challenge and a push.”

One of the great difficulties of all bureaucratized and governmental interventions, no matter how well intentioned, is the official difficulty in making such distinctions, or helping to repair or encourage the family relationships so essential to escape from poverty and dysfunction.

7. NOSTALGIA AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS CLOUD CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE RECENT PAST

With rapid upward mobility still a prominent factor in American life, many families feel proud to exaggerate their own past destitution and somehow prefer to identify government as the source of their progress rather than business. A few years ago I saw this principle at work when speaking to a Jewish Temple in Florida. An angry questioner denounced my conservative politics by insisting that Jews in America owed our prosperity exclusively to liberal programs: were it not for the unions and the radical organizers and for the leftists and their compassionate initiatives, we’d all still be toiling in sweat shops and living in tenements. In response to his impassioned declaration, I asked for a show of hands in the crowd of some 700 people. I asked how many came from families in which labor unions played an important role in economic advancement. A few hands shot up, proudly—at most two or three dozen. Then I asked how many people in the audience came from families who had arrived in the middle class because of federal welfare programs. Members of the crowd looked at one another nervously, but only three people raised their hands in the entire Temple. Finally, I asked the most telling question: how many in that crowd had come to their current state of comfort and opportunity because someone, a parent or a grandparent or the individual himself, had worked hard in business and achieved some measure of success? At this, the overwhelming majority of the audience lifted hands, laughed and applauded in recognition.

Whether the crowd happened to be Jewish, or Irish, or Italian, or Mexican-American, or black, the response wouldn’t have been much different. The vast expansion of the Middle Class that occurred in the 1950’s involved productive work in the private sector and only one prominent form of governmental assistance: the GI Bill, which helped countless veterans (like my father) pay for education and housing and the launching of businesses. The GI Bill – providing long-term reward for military service – hardly constituted a something-for-nothing welfare program.

America has always been a compassionate society, finding various means – mostly private but occasionally involving state and local funds – to provide help to those who required it. “Rugged individualism” never meant isolation from neighbors, family, or fellow congregants. In that context, attempts by left-leaning commentators to credit government alone for social and economic progress remain strained and unpersuasive.

Consider, for example, the argument offered by comedian, talk-show host and Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken concerning his wife, Franni. In his stump speeches, he often re-tells “Franni’s Story” in these terms:

“When she was seventeen months old, her dad – a decorated veteran of World War II – died in a car accident, leaving her mother, my mother-in-law, widowed with five kids.

“My mother-in-law worked in the produce department of a grocery store, but that family made it because of Social Security survivor benefits....Every single one of the four girls in Franni’s family went to college, thanks to Pell Grants and other scholarships… And my mother-in-law got herself a $300 GI loan to fix her roof, and used the money instead to go the University of Maine. She became a grade school teacher, teaching Title One kids- poor kids- so her loan was forgiven. “My mother-in-law and every single one of those five kids became a productive member of society. Conservatives like to say that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – and that’s a great idea. But first, you’ve got to have the boots. And the government gave my wife’s family the boots.”

It’s a moving tale, but it’s hard to believe that without federal programs Franni’s family, with its obvious motivation and intelligence, would have found no way to become “productive members of society.” Especially as the survivors of a decorated veteran, assistance would have been available – if not through the VA, then certainly through local or private agencies. Would the University of Maine truly (or properly?) deny scholarship aid to a widow of a war hero who’s trying to raise five kids? The recent e-bay auction of an angry Senatorial letter to Rush Limbaugh has now raised more than four million dollars (with Limbaugh’s matching contribution) for a private charity that provides scholarships for the children of fallen warriors in the Marines and in law enforcement. This prominent story should serve as a reminder that acts of kindness, decency and generosity are hardly limited to the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

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That’s the problem with the underlying assumption that the poor can only advance in this nation with the assistance of the federal government: it not only dismisses (and undermines) the self-help potential of the needy, but ignores all those other sources of assistance beyond the Beltway.

In this sense, it’s instructive to go back one last time to Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address. Everyone recalls its reassuring opening: “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” Unfortunately, the rest of the speech includes chilling language reminiscent of the Fascist dictatorships simultaneously taking shape in Europe. “….if we are to go forward,” the new President declared, “we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline.”

Was the audience at this point supposed to raise arms and shout “Sieg Heil”?

“With this pledge taken,” FDR continued, “I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack on our common problems…It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.”

Is it any wonder that conservatives gravely feared a grievous suspension of Constitutional rule?

Roosevelt baldly announced: “I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis – broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

In giving some indication just how he might employ that power, Roosevelt spoke (in the speech’s single most shocking (and altogether forgotten) passage of the need for a relocation program that might have pleased Mao, Stalin or Pol Pot: “Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.”

Fortunately, the New Deal never included a new alphabet agency to correct “the overbalance of population in our industrial centers” by driving people by bayonet into the country, but the mere suggestion illuminates the mentality behind FDR’s initiatives and all other sweeping liberal “reforms” over the years.

Under this thinking, the government and its planners make the crucial economic decisions for the people they command --- the enlisted men in the “trained and loyal army” who are “willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline.” The very idea that bureaucrats and politicos can direct economic advancement more reliably than individuals making millions of small decisions for themselves has not only reduced liberty, but invariably threatened prosperity in the process.