Excellent and timely point by Peter Hitchens in the Mail:
Why is it so bad to draw a line between the deserving and the undeserving poor? I have searched the Sermon on the Mount for the words ‘Blessed are the Spongers’ and I cannot find them – or anything remotely like them.
So why does the Archbishop of Canterbury speak as if it was obvious that we should treat people who can work, but won’t, in the same way as we treat those who are truly in need?…
We do see this quite a lot. Naturally from our liberals, but a bit more surprisingly from our religious leaders – including some of my fellow Catholics. It has become almost an article of faith among some that the justness of a society is to be judged by the amount of money expended on the poor. What this had brought us is a bloated welfare State which allows millions of people to live idly when they could be doing something productive.
To make it clear, if a person cannot work to support himself, I believe we have a moral duty to ensure that person a decent standard of living – adequate food, clothing, housing and medical care. No one should suffer lack of necessities through no fault of their own. We are certainly, even in our current financial bind, wealthy enough for that. But we’ve gone way past that – we’ve set up a system which is more about dodging work and responsibility than helping the poor.
We need to differentiate between those who are really helpless and those who are just looking for a free ride. We can’t just pass out the cash to anyone who shows up. First off because we can’t afford it, but more importantly because a culture of dependency is poison for a free society. The more people get on welfare the less likely they are to think about the future of the nation – all such people tend to care about, over the long term, is who promises to provide the most benefits. But the nation cannot live if the work doesn’t get done – and anyone who can work must work…and if they won’t do it while they are at all capable of working, then they should get nothing from the public treasury.
Yes, this is a hard thing – but an act of love is not always a mushy act. Some times love is quite hard; and it is those whom we truly love that we won’t allow to wallow in indolence. Think about it – what parent is really showing love: the parent who prods the child to get a job and get out on his own, or the parent who allows a 30-something layabout to continue sponging off mom and dad? Charity is a moral requirement, but no where are we commanded to be suckers.
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