>>I would use a standard broader than individual responsibility as the basis of my ethics -- to include substantive social involvement.

>I would simply say that I agree that we as individuals have a great responsibility to care for those less fortunate. I believe that firmly.

Agreed.

>However, just as firmly, I believe that government - especially the federal government - is not and can't be the proper mechanism through which to best do this.

If I may, let me expand your comments a bit in order to respond. I may be offbase, but I’d guess behind this lies the assumption that we are generally in control of our destiny and that our environment makes very little difference to our relative success or failure in life. In that view, people who are responsible are successful, those who are not are not successful.

I think that we, as middle class Americans (stating that more to identify myself than others here) tend to underestimate at a conscious level the impact of the environment on our success in life. Yet, if you look at the texture of our lives, it’s clear the value that we place on environment – “what’s the best school district for our children”, “where can I get the best medical services for my family”, etc. We want the best that we can afford because we perceive that the environment will positively affect the quality of our life.

I once had the opportunity to visit with Dick West, an urban pastor in Chicago. He addressed this very issue in the following way. I got to be the example! He asked me to lie down on a table and had one of the youth group members sit on my arm. He suggested that this was an impediment in my life – for example, poor vision – which I have. He asked me to wrestle free of the weight of the youth, which I was able to do.

Dick then said that the situation of the poor is rather different. He spoke about lack of access to quality medical care, perhaps irregular opportunities to eat, irregular access to transportation to school, often a disruptive family environment. He represented this by youths sitting on all of my limbs. When asked to get up, I struggled, but was unable to free myself from the weight of several football players and wrestlers!

The physical force of that example made me realize in a different way how environmental deficiencies can be “weights” and barriers to success, even with the best of effort.

Certainly I agree that a person ultimately is in charge of their own destiny and that a person must take advantage of whatever opportunities are presented. At the same time, I think that the environment that we grow up in contributes a great deal to the eventual success we may experience.

The problem is that “environments” are really difficult to get a handle on! So often they seem closely related to class or race and tend to draw pretty sharp lines of who’s in and who’s out. If we’re on the outside looking in, our “help” may be misguided or unappreciated. The way that our society works, most of us have very little real communication with other socio-economic groups.

That’s a lead in to my conclusion. In most cases, systemic issues cannot be remedied by individual action.

We experience something similar in our own development. After working in VFP for a while, we probably decided we needed a framework of some sort – home grown or whatever. No matter how hard we coded at the line level, we could not avoid the code duplication and lack of structure which that provided. We had to work at a more abstract level.

For example, we realized that the inequity of the laws of segregation of our society up till the 50’s finally could not be adequately addressed by “being nice to black people.” Systemic change of working hard to change laws was required.

So, if the government feels that it is in the public interest to address issues of hunger and poverty, I believe that it provides a mechanism for making substantive change. It’s not ideal, I agree.

We are the wealthiest nation in the world and in history. But, I am ashamed that we rank so much lower in the level of hunger and poverty. I agree, if we all were deeply involved in our own communities, we have the best chance of success for true change. But, our busy successful lives do limit the time we have. In that situation, I see my tax dollars as a contribution of myself to my community.

>Charity is not charity if someone forces you to do it. No one should be able to vote money away from someone else. It is really nothing more than legalized theft. It reminds me of an old "definition" of what a democrat was - "somebody who likes to spend other people's money to make themseleves feel better" - From what I've seen in my adult life - 20+ years now - I don't think that is far off.

I hope you have success in the avenues you find and choose to give of your time, talent and resources to those who are in need.