No faith in faith-based charities

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    Re: Faith-based charity. In this instance, the politicians are doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Charities are indeed, as history and experience have proven, the best safety net. As the publisher of this paper pointed out they are more efficient and caring. Government welfare is at best a destructive failure as the numerous destroyed families, multiple generations of children having children, people who know nothing better than a life of government dependency, special-interest leaders whose political and economic existence depends on the largesse of government money, and a parasitic bureaucracy that only wants to perpetuate itself, not actually solve any poverty. Where President Bush and the Republicans have it wrong is that government is not the one to fund such private charities. With government money comes government control and that naturally raises the specter of separation of church and state. Do we support the varied religions with state money? Would religions submit to government control to get government money? Does this violate the First Amendment: “Government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”? As we have seen throughout history, the best way to destroy freedom of religion is to have the government fund it.

    The real point that is usually missed by voters is that politicians want to have control. I am a Libertarian and am well aware of this. As long as Washington controls the money whether by grants to faith-based charity or money put into welfare programs, politicians are the ones that you have to come to, if you want more money, changes in policy or power. They are not really concerned about the elimination of poverty or human suffering otherwise welfare programs as the failures they are would have been gone a long time ago. They only use these issues to retain power and stay in office. Bush wants to please the religious right by instituting charity as a safety net, all well and good, but he still retains power and control by using government money, in other words our tax dollars. It is a way of buying votes from his constituency like the liberal Democrats buy votes with the welfare programs for theirs and that is the bottom line for any of these politicians whether they are Republican or Democrat. Staying in office, staying in power, controlling the money and making sure that voters come to them, well that is the real reason behind all of this.

    Charities are indeed the way to go, but Bush and also the Democrats will not do it the way it should be done. If the Republicans really wanted charities to do it, this is the way it would happen. The politicians would return tax money to the people, then take money out of their own wallets and give that money to the private charity or faith-based charity of their choice and encourage all Americans to do the same. That is the way a Libertarian would do it. As long as voters keep electing Republicans and Democrats the perversion of charitable giving and the destruction of freedoms written in the Constitution will continue and this society will suffer even more as a result.

    Charles Black

    State Senate candidate, Libertarian Party