Template:Private alms

"The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." Plutarch
These warnings of weakening the people and even destroying society with free bread provided by benefactors who exercise authority have come down to us for centuries from historians like Polybiusand satirist like Juvenal and politicians like Cicero, but also the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles.
Phil Fischer's video, while polished and well done is not only misleading the people who watch it but is missing a basic understanding of the key factors in the individual and social development of communities and the cause for societal decay known for centuries.
Many of the statistics in the video are not the effect of the programs and laws mentioned but the effect of the programs and practices he failed to mention and even appears to be encouraging.
The reason he does not know the solution, which he admits, is because he has not identified the problem.
He is right about people needing to care but if you want go fix society we need to care in away that "strengthens the poor" and not in ways that degenerates their society, which again he appears to promote.

The Solution Seen

Neither the Constitution nor the government it created made America great.

“America is great because she is good.
If America ceases to be good,
America will cease to be great.”

What make a society great but the goodness of the individuals who populate it?

What binds a free society so that it may remain free?

Those who have an eye for their neighbors freedom as much as they have for their own may be free. But, those who have eyes for power over others or the things they produce or have cannot see where they are going for they do not understand that "the love of power is the demon of men".

"Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Matthew 15:14

This theme of loving power like loving the mammon of unrighteousness has repeated itself throughout the testaments since money is just a form of power. Even Christ was tempted with power.

Almost 200 year ago the solutions to liberty were well practiced and known if not understood by all. This was because 2000 years ago Jesus gave us the answer which was living by love, not force and many who made it to America could not have survived with out submission to His Way.

Public and private alms-giving

"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities" Lucius Mestrius Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus, c. 100 AD.
Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh, Caesar and FDR all were those men who offered benefits to the people, taking power and the people's right to choose in payment. FDR's New Deal was an old deal that we should have seen coming.

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.” ― Plato "

Every man has power, power to choose. Men in their vanity and sloth will imagine they have a better idea than God about what is righteous and what is not. They can choose this way or that. We see this distinction in the altars of the good shepherd Able and the impatient plowman of mankind by Cain.

Long before Cain clubbed his brother he coveted what he saw as favor resulting from his sacrifice. We all have to sacrifice to create and provide for our family and friends. Sacrificing on an individual basis is a matter of daily choice but on a collective basis the choice of the individual may already be vested in another who makes those choices for him.

Individualism is about taking care of yourself; it is the belief and practice that every individual is unique and should be self-reliant. Americans have been known for having a strong bent towards individualism because it was founded by people who sought the freedom to practice whatever religion they chose and priced itself on rugged individualism.

The progressive socialist on his way to oppressive communism thinks he is bringing society together in a social justice collective with the rhetoric of “inclusivity, equity and intersectionality” which it says it desires unity but in fact it sows the seeds of division and the destruction of the individual.

Some will tell you that Ethical individualism "holds that the primary concern of morality is the individual, rather than society as a whole, and that morality primarily concerns individual flourishing, rather than one's interactions with others." But for an individual to be truly ethical he would have to care about his neighboring individual as much as he cares about himself. This is because "Ethics" described as moral philosophy "is concerned with what is good for individuals and society."

Cultural determinism is the "ideas, meanings, beliefs, and values people learn as members of a society" at emotional and behavioral levels. If you alter the terms by which you describe the "ideas, meanings, beliefs, and values" of people and the structures and institutions of society you can alter the people themselves and what they believe to be a moral and ethical behavior.

While the modern Church hijacked terms like Religion, Church, and worship, others altered words like Republic and Democracy, We also see that Jordan Peterson claims that "...French intellectuals in particular just pulled off a sleight of hand and transformed Marxism into post-modern identity politics." The moral obligation of the moderate leftists

“So for the postmodernists, the world is a Hobbesian battleground of identity groups. They do not communicate with one another, because they can't. All there is, is a struggle for power, and if you're in the predator group, which means you're an oppressor, then you better look out, because you're not exactly welcome.” Jordan Peterson, video.

The true oppressors are the socialist. Not at first but eventually they get around to it. "Social democracy is a socialist system of government achieved by democratic means. And Socialism is a, "political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." The "means of production" would be anything you gather, make, build, establish will be'distributed, and exchanged... owned or regulated by' someone else.

Another expression of that theory of "Social democracy is an ideology that has similar values to socialism, but within a capitalist framework. The ideology, named from democracy where people have a say in government actions, supports a competitive economy with money while also helping people whose jobs don't pay a lot." The "also helping people whose jobs don't pay a lot" factor of social democracy again gives someone other than you the power of distribute and take from the members.

Small homogeneous social democracies can work for awhile but the bigger the social democracy the more power may be vested in the takers and distributors. Power corrupts. We have seen what Stalin and Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Castro but there was also Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh and Caesar. They all offered their benefits of free bread and the benefits of their protection to the people but they all had the power to exercise authority one over the other. Eventually we see that power grow. They could force the offerings of the people which Samuel told Saul was foolish. Eventually, they they had the power to decide what was good and evil for the people and the people were so divided and degenerated they could not remove their oppressors. Polybius prophesied the process of degeneration of the people 100 years before the first Caesar rose to power. When men began to become slothful in the ways of righteousness and love for their neighbor or become just slothful but greedy for gain at the expense of their neighbor society begins to be changed.

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“At the final moment, when social democracy draws its consequences, the state will put it cannons to work. ...the representatives of authority will always reach for measures of force in the end.” 1898 Rudolf Steiner's letter to Individualist Anarchist John Henry Mackay

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In a nation of individuals every-man can do what is right in his own eyes but there needs to be a united group of ethical or righteous individuals. The question is what unites them and whose righteous is central to their union?

The natural man has an individual power of choice divided equally among men. It is said that we are endowed by our creator with those inalienable rights to choose. We are also endowed by our pro-creators with some of the rights we may posses and enjoy but also some of the responsibilities and debt may also be ours.

What did Jesus say about social justice? “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow's cause,” (Isaiah 1:17). “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). https://sharedhope.org/2018/06/04/biblical-justice-and-social-justice/

Legal Charity

Without welfare by charity alone there will be no liberty. Pure Religion was the welfare of the righteous. Socialism is the religion of people that have abandoned pure Religion through charity and hope by faith and the perfect law of liberty. ‘Public charity’ or ‘legal charity’ who have become so accustomed to the use of force the image that it is moral to take from his neighbor through covetous practices even though they have been told that it will make him merchandise and curse children as a surety for debt.
People take a bite out of their neighbor through the government and will ultimately be devoured in their iniquityThey desire the wages of unrighteousness more than righteousness.
Taxation is not charity. It is force. The more you depend upon force the more subject you are to force. True charity is the freewill choice to help others which makes you more capable of helping yourself.

Alexis de Tocqueville did an extensive survey of America to find out the secret of its success. He believed that it was not only the willingness of Americans to sacrifice their sweat and blood, their toil and wealth for the welfare of others that made them great but he knew that as Americans strayed from private and personal sacrifice into the world of government sponsored welfare programs there would be irrevocable consequences.

• "It is at this stage that ‘public charity’ or ‘legal charity’ (relief or welfare as we now say) begins to supplement the private, voluntary charity that was the traditional form of assistance to the poor. And it is here that we confront the ultimate irony of history:the unforeseen and unfortunate consequences of good intentions." Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher page 30.

Since, religion included your duty to your fellowman, and not just what you thought about God, ‘public charity’ or ‘legal charity’, like public religion, would spot the very souls of Americans and blind them to the real goal of the gospel to set men free. Public charity is the antitheses of Pure Religion. To be pure your charity must be "unspotted by the world" which uses force like Cain and all the nations of the world. While all the prophets told us the same thing warning us over and over, Alexis de Tocqueville clarified the reason behind those warnings:

• "[I]ndividual alms-giving established valuable ties between the rich and the poor. The deed itself involves the giver in the fate of the one whose poverty he has undertaken to alleviate. The latter, supported by aid which he had no right to demand and which he had no hope to getting, feels inspired by gratitude. A moral tie is established between those two classes whose interests and passions so often conspire to separate them from each other, and although divided by circumstance they are willingly reconciled." Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of "Democracy in America".

Moses' nation of Israel was supported by freewill offerings of the people through a network of voluntary actions and contributions to ministers, called Levites, who met basic requirements laid out in the scriptures. There were no compelled taxes until after the people went against the wisdom and warnings of God and elected a ruler in 1 Samuel 8.

The free nation generated by the unselfish generosity of the people in a daily ministration of charity can maintain liberty because society is united by their unselfish practices and remain strong and viable. Strangers and pilgrims tried a common warehouse according to the socialist ideology of from each according to their need and to each according to their need. They quickly understood that "legal charity" they tried at New Plymouth and Jamestown undermined society and brought famine and death. Fortunately, they quickly applied the principle of 2 Thessalonians 3:10 "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat."

Alexis de Tocqueville continued defining the important distinction between individual alms-giving and what he calls legal charity or Public alms:

• "This is not the case with legal charity.The latter allows the alms to persist but removes its morality. The law strips the man of wealth of a part of his surplus without consulting him, and he sees the poor man only as a greedy stranger invited by the legislator to share his wealth. The poor man, on the other hand, feels no gratitude for a benefit that no one can refuse him and that could not satisfy him in any case. Public alms guarantee life but do not make it happier or more comfortable than individual alms-giving; legal charity does not thereby eliminate wealth or poverty in society. One class still views the world with fear and loathing while the other regards its misfortune with despair and envy. Far from uniting these two rival nations, who have existed since the beginning of the world and who are called the rich and poor, into a single people, it breaks the only link which could be established between them. It ranges each one under a banner, tallies them, and, bringing them face to face, prepares them for combat." Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of "Democracy in America".

Progressive movement

• "Let us summarize in a few words. The progressive movement of modern civilisation will gradually and in a roughly increasing proportion raise the number of those who are forced to turn to charity. What remedy can be applied to such evils? Legal alms comes to mind first—legal alms in all forms—sometimes unconditional, sometimes hidden in the disguise of a wage. Sometimes itis accidental and temporary, at other times regular and permanent. But intensive investigation quickly demonstrates that this remedy, which seems both so natural and so effective, is a very dangerous expedient. It affords only a false and momentary sopto individual suffering, and however used it inflames society’s sores. We are left with individual charity. It can produce only useful results. Its very weakness is a guarantee against dangerous consequences. It alleviates many miseries and breeds none.But individual charity seems quite weak when faced with the progressive development of the industrial classes and all the evils which civilisation joins to the inestimable goods it produces. It was sufficient for the Middle Ages, when religious enthusiasm gave it enormous energy, and when its task was less difficult;could it be sufficient today when the burden is heavy and when its forces are so weakened? Individual charity is a powerful agency that must not be despised, but it would be imprudent to rely on it. It is but a single means and cannot be the only one.Then what is to be done? In what direction can we look? How can we mitigate what we can foresee, but not cure?" Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher page 37.

• "Any measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class. This, at least, is its inevitable consequence if not the immediate result. It reproduces all the vices of the monastic system, minus the high ideals of morality and religion which often went along with it. Such a law is a bad seed planted in the legal structure. Circumstances, as in America, can prevent the seed from developing rapidly, but they cannot destroy it, and if the present generation escapes its influence, it will devour the well-being of generations to come." Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher page 30.

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The Moral test

"History is not going to be kind to liberals. With their mindless programs, they've managed to do to Black Americans what slavery, Reconstruction, and rank racism found impossible destroy their family and work ethic."– Walter Williams
But more important Jesus is going to tell them get ye from me you workers of iniquity I never Knew you.
And Peter will remind you that he warned you that your covetous practices would make you merchandise and curse children and others repeated these warnings that you should stand fast in thee liberty that made you free and not be entangled in the elements of the world.

"Moreover, society is better served by private than public charity. Where individual, voluntary charity establishes a ‘moral tie’ between the giver and the receiver, legal charity removes any element of morality from the transaction. The donor (the tax-payer) resents his involuntary contribution, and the recipient feels no gratitude for what he gets as a matter of right and which in any case he feels to be insufficient." Introduction Gertrude Himmelfarb, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher

Only a moral society can remain a free society. The most ancient test for morality is do the people equally care about their neighbor as much as they care about themaelves?

In America back the 17' and 1800s the top schools, like Harvard and Princeton,  were available for rich and poor. It was written into many college charters that no one was turned away because of poverty. Alexis Tocqueville came to America in the 1800 s to discover the cause of its success.

"Americans group together to hold fêtes, found seminaries, build inns, construct churches, distribute books, dispatch missionaries... They establish hospitals, prisons, schools by the same method." He also wrote, "I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support" (Tocqueville 1840,).

So, the American social safety net and therefore its greatness arose, not out of government institutions of power and force but it was all done through charitable association.

"Private charity may seem weaker than public charity because it provides no sustained and certain help for the poor. In one sense, however, this is its strength, for it is precisely its temporary and voluntary character that enables it to alleviate many miseries without breeding others. But it is also a problem, for the private charity that was sufficient in the Middle Ages may be insufficient in the present industrial age. This is the question that now confronts society. If public charity is unsatisfactory and private charity inadequate, how can this new kind of pauperism be averted so that the working classes do not ‘curse the prosperity that they produce?’" Introduction Gertrude Himmelfarb, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher

Local schools, roads and hospitals and asylums were built by the militia and through charitable contributions. The militia was "every able bodied male between 17 and 45" both rich and poor.

There was little or no class struggle in most of America. At the beginning of the twentieth century Americans began to move away from those moral practices of charity that brought them together in many areas of life and either through apathy or ambition looked more to government and less to one another.

Without the daily practice of charity a move toward force as means of a social safety net will be inevitable.

If Austria or any people were already in a moral decline with a divided educational system and resorting to government force was the only path they were willing to select they have already sealed their fate. It may have been comfortable but not righteous. It may satisfy today's needs but things will change and the prophecy of Polybius, the historian of historians, will repeat itself.

Why Choose Charity

"We can also, today more than ever, appreciate Tocqueville’ scriticism of public charity as a legal right—an ‘entitlement’, as we now say." Introduction Gertrude Himmelfarb, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher

Alexis said that he "recognize not only the utility but the necessity of public charity applied to inevitable evils such as the helplessness of infancy, the decrepitude of old age, sickness, insanity." He even admitted that "its temporary usefulness in times of public calamities which God sometimes allows to slip from his hand, proclaiming his anger to the nations. State alms are then as spontaneous as unforeseen, as temporary as the evil itself." But Horatio Bunce and David Crockett and even Jesus Christ would disagree.

The problem is the calamities of this life do not slip through the fingers of God. it is at those very times that we must cling most ardently to His way of righteousness and do no evil imagining that the end justifies the means.

The paradox of the term public charity itself defiles the senses if not the souls of men. While it may be right to give charity, no one has a right to charity.

"‘Right’ itself is an elevating and inspiring idea. ‘There is something great and virile in the idea of right which removes from any request its suppliant character, and places the one who claims it on the same level as the one who grants it.’ (p. 30) But a right to public charity, unlike other rights, degrades the man who claims it by condemning him to a life of dependency and idleness." Introduction Gertrude Himmelfarb, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher page 36.

Alexis presses forth with his own paradox segregating "permanent" and "regular" from the "temporary usefulness" of public charity. Is robbery and rape less robbery and rape, or adultery less adultery because you do it only occasionally? The same is true of national adultery, covetous practices or the exercise of pure Religion. Besides, how many addictions begin with what was to only be a temporary or occasional indulgence?

Besides the degeneration of the people and the robbing them of the right to give charity which undermines the natural and moral flow off charity there is the degradation and alienation of the rich and the poor.

"But I am deeply convinced that any administrative system whose aim will be to provide for the needs of the poor, will breed more miseries than it can cure, will deprave the population that it wants to help and comfort, will in time reduce the rich to being no more than the tenant-farmers of the poor, will dry up the sources of savings, will stop the accumulation of capital, will retard the development of trade, will benumb human industry and activity, and will culminate by bringing about a violent revolution in the State, when the number of those who receive alms will have become as large as those who give it,and the indigent, no longer being able to take from the impoverished rich the means of providing for his needs, will find it easier to plunder them of all their property at one stroke than to ask for their help." Alexis de Tocqueville’s Memoir on Pauperism translated by Seymour Drescher page 37.

The reason  Americans vote against universal healthcare is, or should be, because some Americans still understand that universal healthcare is universal force and the centralization of power and the loss of individual choice. They know this leads to despotism and tyranny by appealing to our own beast nature so that we become willing to take a bite out of our neighbor's or even our children's future paycheck to obtain benefits today.

The Bible, which has been one of the great moral compass of history calls these benefits]] the wages of unrighteousness.

This American movement toward socialism over the last 100 years has allowed the nation to be divided into two divisions, those who have eyes to see and ears to hear and those who do not.

Like Polybius correctly foretold over 2000 years ago it degenerates the people over time into "perfect savages" once they become accustomed to living at the expense of others.

Obviously some do not want universal healthcare because there will be an increase in taxation and some also know that the quality and availability of care will go down.

Unquestionably, statistics show that conservatives are far more generous when it comes to giving to charity out of their own pockets and liberals are far more generous in giving out of someone else's pockets.

The United States ranks in the top three countries of the world on the charitable index with Myanmar and Australia. Sweden and Austria ranking in at 25th and 30th respectively because they have turned to accepting the covetous practices of Socialism over private and individual charity. Venezuela  and Russia who take the 117th and 126th places respectively show us what direction societies and nations are headed in when they go the way of the socialist State.

Others like Dr. Nesbit associate professor of public administration and policy at the University of Georgia will argue that “The evidence shows that private philanthropy can’t compensate for the loss of government provision.”

While she will readily admit that Republicans prefer to “provide for the collective good through private institutions" Dr. Nesbit went on to say, "It’s not equal. What government can put into these things is so much more than what we see through private philanthropy." But what the good Doctor and people fail to realize is that government only puts into universal healthcare what it takes by force from others. This makes the State stronger and the people morally weaker. And because all governments of the world borrow from future generations to provide a plethora of benefits these system of "legal charity" curse children.