More and more it seems like we are living in Orwell's 1984 where words have ceased to have their ordinary meaning. Yet another example of this occurred recently when President Obama, in conference call with religious leaders, called healthcare reform a "moral obligation" and accused those who question it of "bearing false witness." When did it become a "moral obligation" to provide government run healthcare?
One sees much in the Bible about the virtue of charity (e.g. the Good Samaritan paid for the man set upon by robbers out of his own means, Luke 10:25-37) but nothing about lobbying for government mandates. One sees how the early church members voluntarily provided out of their own means for widows & orphans (1 Timothy 5) and admonished believers to provide for their own destitute family members but nothing about them lobbying Rome for a tax to provide universal healthcare. Indeed, if anything, it would seem to be a moral obligation of the church to oppose government actions that would, of necessity, unjustly deprive people of property, robbing Peter to pay Paul to continue the religious idiom, foreclosing on the possibility of private charity in the future. It is a Fabian Socialist conceit to imagine the government is just a person writ large, with the same moral character.
But newspeak is nothing new for President Obama. In campaigning he labeled his redistributionist social engineering as "fairness." The President seems to fail to realize, or willfully overlook, that "giving" coerced by the government is not giving at all, nor is it virtue. For virtue to be true virtue, it must be voluntary.
Americans are charitable people; as author Arthur Brooks has noted we give more per capita than any other country even adjusted for income. If President Obama really wants to help the 15% of Americans that are without health insurance, a transitory pool, then he would remove the government impediments to charitable medical treatments. Let doctors & hospitals deduct 100% of pro bono work. Reduce the liability of opening free clinics by reforming tort law. Reward pharmaceutical companies that give away drugs to needy patients by letting them write-off those contributions. Our moral obligation to care for our neighbors is not something that can be assigned through payroll taxes but is, as it has always been, a personal responsibility.
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