Wanted to explore an idea with you. That is, if you would be kind enough to travel with me for a bit. As we look around this world we live in, it is easy to find those in very difficult, if not utterly desperate, situations. As the internet has matured and spread to many many countries more and more people are exposed to this great need. If I live in Cuba and am a doctor receiving $35 a month I can do little but pray for those in these various hopeless places. If I live in India and make just enough to buy food for one meal a day for my family and me then, again, I am able only to "feel sorry" for the hurting and the hungry around the world.
A few days ago I was fixing a problem in a toll booth at one of the Turnpike plazas in my area. While visiting with the collector he mentioned that he was only working part-time and was retired from another job. He went on to say that his son ran an orphanage in Haiti and they didn't have enough money coming in to cover all of their needs. So this gentleman decided to take on this part-time job which allows him to send more money to his son and the orphans he was trying to help. Another co-worker has spent untold thousands of dollars and thousands of hours setting up medical and teaching facilities in Guatemala. Several people from work went to the Mississippi coast to help clean up and rebuild after Katrina a few years back. I could spend hours talking about people I personally know who spend time and treasure serving others whether here or in other countries.
My great fear is that in another 50 years, if we continue down this Progressive road we are on, we will land in a place where our freedoms will not afford us the opportunity to serve others, individually, like we do now. Our movement toward centralized government and the necessary loss of individual freedoms that accompanies such a movement, will leave us with the shared poverty, administered in the name of fairness, that will impede, or stop, our ability to act on our compassion with generosity. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to do nothing, when you haven't the resources to help, which allows for a selfish, and lazy citizenry to be cared for by an all powerful, ostensibly benevolent ruling class. A country full of people living in the government's basement with a lifetime supply of condoms and cannabis. WOW! That's a lot better than having the responsibility of trying to use your resources to help others.
" ......Until every nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Alexis de Tocqueville
