Design To Function

     I’ve done several kinds of design. They all have unique requirements and constraints. But they share a single universal imperative: the one in the title above.

     “What must this thing to do?” is the prime question of design. You must know and understand it. You must also know and understand that what you want it to do isn’t the only thing it will do. Quoth Marc Stiegler: “You can never do only one thing.” There will be side effects. It’s guaranteed that one or more won’t be pleasant.

     These days there’s a great deal of consternation over charity. That should surprise no one. The foofaurauw over how, when, and to whom to give has been raging since Christ walked the earth. Much of that rage is over the putative side effects, with this one in particular: the more money and effort is dedicated to charitable action, the more money and effort charitable action will demand.

     The great Cyril Northcote Parkinson understood it. He propounded his Second Law – “Expenditure rises to meet income, and tends to exceed it” – for that reason. That Law is broad in application, but it definitely covers charity.

     Money and effort put to meeting a particular demand reinforce that demand. Consider what happened to medical costs when governments got involved in paying for medical products and services. Providers raised their prices to absorb what had been budgeted and clamored for still more. It’s the same with charity: “Hey, look how much I got from them! Get over here and get in on it!”

     That didn’t happen when charitable giving was confined to the wills and wallets of private citizens. Their willingness to give of themselves was limited by firm constraints: their families’ needs and their recognition that there’s such a thing as unwise giving. The responsibilities and demands of living enforced the former; personal involvement with the recipients of charity persuaded them of the latter.

     Given that sad wisdom – and as it flows directly from human nature, it’s both sad and inevitable – how does one design a charitable organization?

     The short if brutal answer is: You don’t. Organized charities destroy the personal involvement that best serves to deter unwise and excessive giving. The closest possible approach to a sound charitable organization is something like a local food bank that vets those who want to partake of it. Even those will be plundered to some extent by the undeserving.

     Mega-charities such as the United Way are the best possible examples of unwisdom in giving. They absorb most of their receipts in organizational expenses; the fraction remaining isn’t guaranteed to reach the deserving needy. That’s not conjecture; they issue regular reports that make the problem starkly obvious. Jerry Pournelle would have told you so.

     Charity – the simple act of helping those who need and deserve help – is thus insusceptible to efficiency through organization. But if something that simple defies top-down control, what is there to say or do about the many thousands of other things for which we form and tolerate large organizations?

* * *

     There’s a quote from Herbert Spencer that comes to mind:

     “A blade which is designed both to shave and to carve, will certainly not shave so well as a razor or carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank, would in all probability exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A gas-company, which should also be an infant-school society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill.” And if an institution undertakes, not two functions but a score; if a government, whose office it is to defend citizens against aggressors, foreign and domestic, engages also to disseminate Christianity, to administer charity, to teach children their lessons, to adjust prices of food, to inspect coal-mines, to regulate railways, to superintend house-building, to arrange cab-fares, to look into people’s stink-traps, to vaccinate their children, to send out emigrants, to prescribe hours of labor, to examine lodging-houses, to test the knowledge of mercantile captains, to provide public libraries, to read and authorize dramas, to inspect passenger-ships, to see that small dwellings are supplied with water, to regulate endless things from a banker’s issues down to the boat-fares on the Serpentine; is it not manifest that its primary duty must be ill-discharged in proportion to the multiplicity of affairs it busies itself with? Must not its time and energies be frittered away in schemes, and inquiries, and amendments, in discussions, and divisions, to the neglect of its essential business? And does not a glance over the debates make it clear that this is the fact? and that, while Parliament and public are alike occupied with these mischievous interferences, these Utopian hopes, the one thing needful is left almost undone?

     [Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus The State]

     Spencer was one of the greatest intellects of the Nineteenth Century, nor can anyone justly claim to have surpassed him. He saw clearly. He told us about what he saw forthrightly. And what was he saying in the above? Design to function! As straitly as possible, have your instrument do the thing for which it was fashioned, and nothing else. Even if we omit all abstract considerations of things such as freedom, justice, and the rights of men, there can be no profit in assigning a great many responsibilities to a single instrument.

     That is: except for the profit that accrues to those who loot it.

* * *

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. The above is the consequence of having crossed the path of one who seemed a sincere liberal. His grail is “compassion in government.” He felt it as imperative as dispensing justice and protecting the nation from invasion. I could not sway him. Ultimately I had to conclude that for him, charity was a “design point:” something absolutely required of the State. The absurdity of an institution whose sole method is force undertaking to dispense the milk of human kindness did not reach him.

     Well, I suppose I should restrict my outreach efforts to those who can be persuaded. Now it’s back to fiction. This next novel will be special! Not only will it tell a gripping story that expresses deep truths about the human condition; it will also present and analyze an entirely new chess opening and include the C.S.O.’s twelve favorite cake recipes! Coming Soon to a website near you.

A Poignant Thought

     Happy New Year!

     For some the prospects the New Year offers are offset by the frustrations of the year before. That’s particularly so for the indie writer:

I sold 22 books in 2025 😭🙌🏻✨

— Tai Harrow - Indie Author (@taiharrow) January 2, 2026

     I don’t know that lady, but her bittersweet announcement strikes a chord with me. 22 books! God alone knows how long and hard she labored over her offerings. And while 22 is better than zero, I’m sure her aspirations ran to higher numbers.

     There are a lot of us. We probably outnumber writers published by conventional publishing houses by a couple of orders of magnitude. And it’s a given that not all of us are really good writers or storytellers. But the doggedness of the indie writer carries a meaning independent of whether he’s got all the assets of a Steinbeck, a Hemingway, or a Faulkner.

     There are stories in him. Regardless of his abilities, he wants to tell them. And they might just need to be told. If you’re my age or older, you might remember this tag line from an old television show:

     There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

     That show focused on a single police precinct in New York City. It was widely acclaimed. Yet it told stories embedded in relatively ordinary lives.

     A human life is composed of stories. Some are complete; others are “works in progress.” Some shriek with immediacy. And very few are ever told.

* * *

     Long ago, I wrote:

     The distribution of writers attempting the e-publication channel goes something like this:

• 90% or more: Persons who cannot write and should not try.
• ~7%: Persons with a fair command of English, but who have no stories to tell that anyone else would want to read.
• ~2%: Persons with a fair command of English who have stories to tell, but whose styles and preconceptions are unsuited to telling them in a winning fashion.
• ~1%: Capable storytellers, including a significant number who could crack the “traditional” publishing channels (or who already have).

     I rather regret that partition. I’ve come to believe that everyone has one or more stories in him. He may not have the ability to tell them in a winning way, but they’re there nonetheless. If they press him fiercely enough, they’ll come out: perhaps just in conversation over a beer, but they will be told. And those to whom they are told will feel their impact.

     I’ve encountered quite a number of other indie writers these past fifteen years. (We tend to cluster. After all, no one else will have us.) They share the need to tell stories. Even the least capable of us is responding to pressures he cannot withstand.

     Yet answering “What do you do?” with “I’m a writer” is the most reliable way I know of making the asker excuse himself and head for refuge. Sometimes it works even if the asker is an aspiring writer himself. Try it at your next social gathering.

     Even once set down in print or pixels, some stories remain “untold” de facto. No one listens. Perhaps that’s what keeps America’s legion of therapists in business.

* * *

     Don’t mind me. After all, I’m just a talkative old man. As I’ve said before, I write these pieces mainly for myself. That includes the stories I tell. No one is obliged to listen, and few do. But I do have a point.

     You have stories in you. So do the people around you. They want to tell theirs at least as urgently as you want to tell yours. They might not be articulate. They might not have patience enough to do all that typing and formatting. But their need is no less than yours.

     Among the simplest and greatest of charities is the gift one gives by listening.

     Just an early-morning thought.

Could We, Should We Dept.

     Actor Kevin Sorbo asks:

     Muslim militants post selfies with thousands of dead civilians after conquering major Sudanese city! So what are we going to do about it??

     Hm. Sudan, you say? That’s in Africa, isn’t it? What we used to call the “Dark Continent?” Doesn’t Sudan, a sovereignty with a seat in the United Nations General Assembly, have its own military? Couldn’t they do something about the violence? Or is the Sudanese government disinclined to act?

     If that last is the case, an American expeditionary force would have to contend with both the Muslim militants and the Sudanese army. We might have to destroy the latter before we could confront the former. What then? More “nation building?” Perhaps another massive occupation force, to give our precious diplomats and experts time to teach the Sudanese to be civilized members of the global community? That worked out well in Afghanistan, didn’t it?

     And there’s this question to answer: What American interests would be served by intervening in Sudan’s internal chaos?

     Yes, I’m being a bit heavy-handed here, but the impulse demanded some air. We forget so swiftly what our other foreign interventions have wrought. We overlook the savagery that characterizes all of Africa. We think ourselves too powerful to be gainsaid... and too benevolent to be wrong.

     But maybe this time it will be different, you say? What evidence exists for that proposition? And what degree of bloodshed on the part of young Americans would you be willing to invest in the possibility?

     I am so tired of this shit.

---

     Intervenors of every variety call for America to fix other peoples, other nations, other continents. Some of them are genuinely benevolent. Some of them sincerely believe in America’s omnipotence. And some of them see an opportunity for power or baksheesh. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. We can’t do it.

     With all our power and wealth, we cannot raise savages to the level of intelligence and clarity required for the job. I wrote about this long ago:

     America is what it is because it is a made society, founded on clearly understood principles by a pioneer people. The societies of Africa are legacy societies, weighed down by the tribal traditions, superstitions and animosities of thousands of years, unleavened by the Enlightenment from which our core concepts sprang. Until Africa renounces its past, there will be no room in which to build a new future.

     But Africa will not renounce its past. It hasn't yet outgrown its belief in magic. Combatants in the Liberian nightmare are eating their slain enemies' vital organs, in accord with the ancient voodoo belief that this will add the strength of the vanquished to their own. So Liberians look across the Atlantic and cry, "Help us, Lady Liberty! Feed us! We are poor and terrified, you are rich and strong! Bring your breadbasket and your gun and deliver us from the darkness!"

     You cannot have a civilized nation without civilized people. You cannot have a civilized people without both Christian ethics and the Enlightenment. Haven’t our previous ventures into civilizing other lands made that clear yet?

     But that do-gooding impulse can be so strong.

---

     The West can’t help Africa. Nor should we. The record speaks for itself. – Kim Du Toit

     Painful truths are the most aggravating kind. Where’s the Advil? Never mind that; where’s the Oxy? Let’s forget our record of failure at uplift, roll up our sleeves, and get on with it! After all, we’re Americans! And this time, we have experience to draw on, right, guys?

     Experience is supposed to teach. And it does: it tells you why you’ve just busted your skull... after you’ve busted it. But the test comes first; the lesson comes afterward. We’ve had the test several times. We’ve “busted our skull,” figuratively at least, on each occasion. Yet many have failed to absorb the lesson.

     Christian missionaries have strained to bring Christianity to the Dark Continent. Their successes were mostly in European colonies. When the colonial powers retreated, Christianity and its influence began a steady retreat. That wasn’t (and isn’t) because there was something lacking in those missionaries’ efforts, or in Christianity itself. It’s Africa itself: the African mentality in the African environment. Kim Du Toit’s essay, quoted above, delineates the matter too well, and too painfully, for an intelligent reader to miss it.

     Islam found a fallow field in Africa. It appeals to the savage mentality: conversion by the sword! If they won’t accept Allah, kill or enslave them! Scant wonder Islam is sweeping through the continent. Africa couldn’t be more suited to Islam if they’d been designed for each other.

     Continuous tribal warfare is equally well suited to Africa. It’s returned in force in every country where Europeans once ruled and have retreated. Only watchful, unrelenting, greatly superior power can keep the peace when the natives’ fondest wish is to slaughter one another. Well, yes: first they go after any whites that were foolish enough to remain. Then, the fun really begins!

     Islamic forces are rapidly expunging Christianity from Nigeria and any other parts of Africa where it’s hung on. The Enlightenment finds few fans among Africa's savage, bloody-minded natives. There’s one and only one cure:

     So here’s my (tongue-in-cheek) solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.

     Kim may have intended that facetiously, but it’s no less true for that.

Toward The End Of A Difficult Year

     This will be brief...I think. With Christmas Day behind us, a single week remains in which to assess this Year of Our Lord 2020, to try to make some sense of it, and to think about how we might improve the “sequel.”

     Most of my drivel here at Liberty’s Torch is about politics, public policy, and the perversities of government. I doubt that will disappear completely from my oeuvre, though I do intend to try to broaden my offerings in 2021. Politics has become too depressing for a regular diet of op-ed. New topics are needed. Maybe I’ll produce a few essays on currency manipulation or strategic weapons planning...no, wait, what am I thinking? Bad commentator! No Nesselrode pie! I’ll have to give the matter some time to percolate.

     Of course, the “big stories” are already known to everyone who takes even a passing interest in affairs. There’s no need for me, or anyone else, to enumerate them for you. But there are innumerable little stories that have been neglected because of the “big” ones. Indeed, we’re surrounded by them. And I shall tell you a terrible thing, an open secret that you might have pondered in years past:

The first job of the media is to get you to ignore those little stories, and to give the whole of your attention to the stories they select and trumpet.

     This is thought-fodder that hasn’t been adequately addressed here or elsewhere. There’s a dynamic behind it that “should” be “obvious,” and so (for a change) I shall refrain from making it explicit. But I’ll point you toward one of the things it’s savaged – and not by coincidence:

     These Americans are the most peculiar people in the world. You'll not believe it when I tell you how they behave. In a local community in their country, a citizen may conceive of some need [that] is not being met. What does he do? He goes across the street and discusses it with his neighbor. Then what happens? A committee begins functioning on behalf of that need. All of this is done by private citizens on their own initiative. The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens. [Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1831.]

     What’s this? There’s a need that’s not being met? Quelle horreur! Surely the government must act at once! Private citizens are far too consumed with their own affairs to attend to such a “need!” – Today’s America (and to be fair, also every other country in the world).

     That’s the contemporary attitude, Gentle Reader – and it stems from the media’s relentless portrayals of every “need” as this huge, overbearing, terrifying thing that would make Godzilla run screaming for his mommy. But in pre-Civil War America, ordinary citizens saw to such “needs” according to their own priorities, abilities, and resources. De Tocqueville, a visitor from over-governed Europe, was stunned by our forebears’ readiness to act on their own initiative, without invoking the political sphere.

     There are many components to the thing, but two stand out above the rest: the vulgarized concept of “need” and the collaboration between the media and our native class of thieves, swindlers, fraudsters, and power-mongers politicians and their hangers-on.

     It’s when a “need” is seen as a critical, overwhelming thing that one’s personal abilities and resources could never address that those who desire power over us are best pleased. And yes, it also sells column-inches and commercial slots.

---

     Among my resolutions for the New Year, I’ve resolved to try (at least) not to belabor the overwhelmingly obvious for my Gentle Readers. You’re bright folks who don’t need to be beaten about the head and shoulders with stuff you can easily see and comprehend for yourselves. However, as it is still 2020 as I write this, I’ll allow myself a soupcon of Overwhelming Obviousness and leave it for you to ponder:

Every “big need” is composed of many “little needs.”

     Private action is inherently preferable to political action, again for reasons too “obvious” to explain...not that I haven’t done exactly that hundreds or thousands of times to date. If you want to keep government at bay – and great God in heaven, how obvious is the desirability of that! – you must be willing to take a personal hand in meeting the needs you perceive:

Feed the hungry.
Give drink to the thirsty.
Clothe the naked.
Shelter the homeless.
Comfort the sick and the afflicted.
Visit the imprisoned.
Bury the dead and pray for their souls.

     Those seven items are what Catholics call the corporal works of mercy. They are the only true needs, and they are not inherently “big.” If your district has some number of impoverished, or homeless, or sick persons who lack loving relatives, you can assist in meeting their needs. Moreover, you won’t be alone in doing so, for as soon as others notice what you’re doing, they’ll join you, if only to quiet their consciences.

     The hour is late when it comes to the confinement of governments to their proper sphere. We may have waited too long, allowed things to go too far. Yet there is still hope. And yes, your contributions are tax-deductible...for the present, at least. But don’t succumb to the lure of “checkbook charity.” The record of large “charitable organizations” at actually doing charitable work is exceedingly poor, marred by a great deal of corruption and waste. Roll up your sleeves and get involved in the gritty work.

     The United States has never been more than about 10% distant from a condition in which there are no involuntarily hungry, naked, or homeless persons. If the 90% of us who “have it good” were each to put four hours per week into charitable activity, that fraction would drop dramatically...if not all the way to zero. And governments would have no rationale for meddling in what’s properly the domain of the good man with an operating conscience.

     More anon.

Multiplications: A Sunday Rumination 2020-08-02

     [This essay first appeared at Liberty’s Torch on August 3, 2014. As a huge number of Americans are in an unprecedented degree of need, and there’s a lot of confusion over the proper occasions for – and methods of doing – charity, it seems appropriate that it be reposted at this time. – FWP]

---

     No doubt any Christians in the audience will be familiar with this Gospel tale:

     Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it, they followed him on foot from the towns. As he got out he saw the large crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. When it became evening his disciples came to him saying, “This is an isolated place and the hour is already late. Send the crowds away so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But he said to them, “They don’t need to go. You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” “Bring them here to me,” he said. Then he instructed the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven he gave thanks and broke the loaves. He gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the broken pieces left over, twelve baskets full. Not counting women and children, there were about five thousand men who ate. [Matthew 14:13-21]

     Ah, yes: The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. Consider how this well known tale is usually retold and swiftly dismissed. Looky here: a miracle! That Redeemer was one awesome dude, eh? That’s that, everybody got the bread crumbs? Let’s pass on to something else now, children.

     This morning at Mass, Deacon Michael Byrne of Infant Jesus parish in Port Jefferson told it properly. I can’t remember his exact words, but I can reproduce the gist of his explication. I doubt I’ll ever forget it.

     First, Jesus elects to leave the populated area for “an isolated place.” But a huge crowd drops everything and follows him thence...out of a pure desire to be with Him, and remain with Him until night has fallen.

     Second, His disciples implore Him to send the other followers away, so they can procure food. But He is moved by the crowd’s hunger for Him and instructs His disciples to feed them out of their own store.

     Third, they protest – out of selfishness, or out of realism? – that “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” Clearly, the disciples would prefer that the crowd depart, leaving them alone with Jesus.

     Fourth, Jesus would have none of that. He takes the disciples’ food into His hands, gives thanks, and returns it to the disciples for distribution to the multitude.

     Fifth and finally, all are fed to satiety, yet the leftovers the disciples collect prove copious enough to give a Tupperware^® salesman an orgasm.

     So what happened? Yes, there was a miracle. Yes, it was Christ at the center thereof. But note: It was His disciples’ charity from their own meager store, however reluctantly they provided it, that was the seed for that miracle, and His disciples that distributed the food to the hungry crowd. Moreover, the throng that had followed Him to that deserted place had asked nothing of Him...except to be in His nearness.

     There’s a moral in there, isn’t there?

---

     Sane persons who live in healthy societies don’t perform charity carelessly or thoughtlessly. They seek to know what they’re doing, and for whom, and what consequences it will have. But once such a man has identified a person in need, has decided that that person deserves assistance rather than being a freeloader of some sort, and has satisfied himself that his alms are more likely to conduce to good rather than harm – i.e., that his gifts will bring about a net improvement in the state of the beneficiary – he proceeds to give from his own store, and with his own hands. He doesn’t allow intermediaries between himself and the recipient, for one can never be certain that such persons will serve his agenda and not something wholly distinct from it.

     That sort of charity is vanishingly rare in our time. Almost all contemporary “charitable giving” involves monetary gifts rendered to salaried intermediaries who work for corporate entities, on the representation that the funds will go to benefit “the needy.” Those “needy” never acquire faces or names.

     As we know, in the usual case a hefty fraction of our monetary gifts won’t get anywhere near “the needy,” going instead to “operating expenses:” the salaries of those who collected the funds. That fraction has, in a number of cases, risen all the way to 100%. What remains to become benefits distributed to “the needy” will do so in an unpredictable fashion: the giver can know neither the form nor time of delivery. Perhaps worst of all, “the needy” are not guaranteed to be persons whose troubles are not of their own making, nor that the benefits will bring about a true and enduring improvement in their existences. Few “charitable institutions” bother to do the checking that might ascertain such things. Worse, they and those who work for them have an innate incentive to perpetuate dependency rather than to dispel it, for dependency is the source of their income and their importance.

     Thus, quite a lot of our giving results mainly in paying well-to-do hirelings and perpetuating the dependency of persons who, in the most common case, feel no gratitude whatsoever for their blessings.

     So why do we do it?

---

     Of all the glorious things Jesus said while He wore the flesh, none are more important than these:

     Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together. And one of them, an expert in religious law, asked him a question to test him: 22:36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. 22:39 The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” [Matthew 22:34-40]

     Clearly, to “love your neighbor” implies that you should help him when appropriate – i.e., when he wants it, needs it, and deserves it. You must not do him harm: “Love does no evil to a neighbor.” But who is this “neighbor” of whom the Redeemer speaks? Is it anyone and everyone who might happen to profess a need?

     Not at all. Your neighbor is he who is near you: near enough that you can determine what he needs, the reasons for it, and what might improve his condition for yourself.

     Only if you’re confident that you know those things should you proceed to render charity – from your own hands, and never against your neighbor’s wishes or resistance.

     Jesus had His disciples distribute the food He had blessed and invested with His power. He intended that they be the ones the throng see as their beneficiaries, perhaps because He knew that the disciples’ time on Earth would greatly exceed His, but perhaps more because He wanted them to know true charity as few, even in those years, knew it. They had performed the preliminaries: taking stock of the hour and the crowd’s lack of food, and providing their own food, however meager, for an offering. The third step – the actual giving of alms from person to person – was what remained. With it, the recipe was completed, and Love could act to multiply their gifts as He intended.

     The lesson has largely been lost on us of the Twenty-First Century. It need not be so.

     May God bless and keep you all.

On Charity: A Sunday Rumination

     Imagine the following conversation:

Charitable Canvasser: Give me money.
FWP: Why?
CC: I need it.
FWP: And why should that concern me?
CC: Because I’ll use it for charity.
FWP: Meaning what?
CC: I’ll use the money you give me to do good things for others.
FWP: What good things?
CC: Good things! You know, stuff to help others.
FWP: That’s rather non-specific.
CC: Don’t worry, it’s stuff you’d approve of.
FWP: Could I do those things?
CC: Well, yeah. Some of them, anyway.
FWP: Then why should I pay you to do them?
CC: (Stalks off unhappily)

     Perhaps the above isn’t a perfect schematic of the “charitable canvasser’s” appeal. After all, there are some good things I can’t do for others, by virtue of my limited resources and geographic reach. But what are they? Aren’t others attending to them? If not, why not?

     Quite a lot of money flows into charities each year. The flow intensifies as the end of the year approaches, for reasons we need not discuss. They who donate are surely hoping (at least) that some of their gifts will be used to “do good things for others.” But the percentage that actually goes to such purposes is always less than 100%. Often it’s a lot less. Moreover, the things done are not always good things.

     It doesn’t matter whether the importuning organization is religious or secular. Both are capable of squandering your donation, and both are capable of misrepresenting their activities and intentions. Neither should be presumed to be doing good things just because it claims to do so. Both are likely to be doing things that are other than good as well, whether or not you know about them.

     As your esteem for the charitable organization rises, the danger that it intends to do something it shouldn’t do – indeed, something that shouldn’t be done — rises in proportion.

---

     I can sound like a hardass when I tee off on this topic. Yet I’m quite sincere about it. Indeed, I consider unwise charitable giving to be one of the more important plagues – material and spiritual – of our time.

     First and foremost: While it is a Christian duty to act as the Good Samaritan did when an occasion for charity presents itself, there are conditions upon that duty.

• You are not required to harm yourself.
• Your obligations to your dependents must not be stinted.
• You must not impair anyone else’s obligations to his dependents.
• You must do no harm to anyone else.

     Much of what organized charities do is of dubious value to anyone but the organization’s paid staff. Gifts to such organizations might be used in part to help someone who needs and deserves help, but it’s virtually guaranteed that much of the money will be wasted...and some of it will cause harm to undeserving others.

     The best charity is personal. It goes to Jones, who through no fault of his own faces a significant, demonstrable need that he cannot meet out of his own labor and resources, and comes from Smith, who is a neighbor – i.e., one who is near – to Jones. Therefore Smith knows Jones’s circumstances, and can ensure that his gift will do good rather than harm.

     That highly condensed schematic of “the best charity” hides some potential complications. Quoth David L. Burkhead:

     The truth is, there are some people–not everyone, perhaps not even most, but some–who, if you provide them enough for even a basic living without their having to earn it, will accept that and make no attempt to improve their lot through their own efforts. Oh, they may complain about how hard they have it, but that complaint doesn’t motivate them to go work their way out of their situation. If anything, it’s intended to influence you to provide more of that “basic living” they’re not having to work for.

     Avoiding the creation or perpetuation of dependency is one of the desiderata of any charitable situation. Yet government “welfare” programs have turned millions into enduring dependents. While the incentive structures of private charities are unlike those of governments, the warning there should be heeded. Private actors can create dependency too. They’re most likely to do so in the absence of personal connections between benefactors and beneficiaries.

     Unwise charity is easier to fall into than one might think.

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     This is on my mind just now because my parish is in the midst of a “commitment campaign.” Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a campaign to guilt-trip parishioners into putting a larger amount in the collection basket each Sunday. This is a yearly event. Seldom are the intended uses of the hoped for increase in funding made plain and specific to the private communicant.

     I’m against blindly accommodating such a call for more money. There are things the clergy and paid staff of a Catholic parish must do: promulgate the Gospels; teach the Catechism; administer the sacraments; keep watch over the more vulnerable parishioners. These jobs need not be expensive in dollar terms. There are also things the clergy and paid staff should do: foster the sense of a community of men of good will, united by our faith in Jesus Christ; encourage parishioners to be welcoming toward new arrivals; generally keep parishioners aware of local and regional developments important to themas Catholics. No more are these items that require heavy funding.

     Beyond those things lies the realm of personal initiative: what individuals can and should do as individuals for other individuals. If concerted action is desirable, the parish can provide a locus for organization. However, those who are capable are those who must act. To “hire it done” is not Christian charity. If anything, that would foster the sense that “it’s not my problem:” i.e., that by giving cash we can distance ourselves from what’s actually going on at the “sharp end.”

     Remember this Gospel event?

     Which when Jesus had heard, he retired from thence by boat, into a desert place apart, and the multitudes having heard of it, followed him on foot out of the cities. And he coming forth saw a great multitude, and had compassion on them, and healed their sick.
     And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying: This is a desert place, and the hour is now past: send away the multitudes, that going into the towns, they may buy themselves victuals.
     But Jesus said to them, They have no need to go: give you them to eat.
     They answered him: We have not here, but five loaves, and two fishes.
     He said to them: Bring them hither to me. And when he had commanded the multitudes to sit down upon the grass, he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitudes.
     And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up what remained, twelve full baskets of fragments. And the number of them that did eat, was five thousand men, besides women and children.

     [Matthew 14:13-21. Emphasis added, as St. Matthew was weak in HTML.]

     After Jesus blessed the disciples’ offering, He returned it to them for distribution. He wanted the offering to come from their hands, not His. And so it is with the charity Christians should do in His year of 2019.

Ultra-Quickies: Team Toni Anne

     If you read this piece, you may have been waiting for the GoFundMe link for Toni Anne, the leukemia-stricken young woman I mentioned therein. Well, here it is:

Team Toni Tough

     If you’re feeling charitable and have a few dollars to spare, I can think of worse ways to distribute a little largesse.

Americans In The Year Of Our Lord 2017

     Courtesy of Ace of Spades, I just heard this remarkable statement, made in the Seventies by Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair, for the first time:

     Forty years have passed since Sinclair issued that statement. Has anything changed? Why, yes: Americans have gotten rather tired of being expected to right all the wrongs of the world while being castigated as oppressors and exploiters. We've become irritated with the global assumption that we will defend right, uphold justice, and lift up the downtrodden whenever and wherever necessary, regardless of whether anyone else lifts a finger to do so. And for the first time since the Wilson Administration, there's a rising, possibly majority sentiment in favor of keeping to ourselves.

     After all, we've got troubles, too. Violence at political rallies and appearances by conservative spokesmen. A government riddled with corruption and time-servers. Major executive departments that use their unchecked powers for political purposes. An economy just beginning to awaken from a ten-year slumber. A middle class that can barely pay its bills. Significant public movements openly opposed to Christianity, private property, national sovereignty, the national borders, the traditional family, parental rights, historical memory, freedom of speech, the right to defend oneself, even the right to life. Untrustworthy news media. Major channels of communication increasingly monopolized by a few, highly intolerant corporations with a political agenda. An educational establishment hostile to knowledge and rational thought. Entertainment media that deluge us, day after day, with ill-concealed propaganda.

     But let some pestiferous concentration of violent savages on the other side of the globe suffer a flood, a volcano, or an earthquake, and at once the cry arises: "Where are the Americans?"

     It is rather wearying, isn't it?

---

     In February of last year, I wrote:

     There are reasons why the United States, as large, wealthy, and mighty as it is, cannot save other nations from their miseries. Those miseries are the logical consequence of the erroneous intellectual and emotional baggage toted by the denizens of other lands. Any aid we send to such places, whether or not it’s accompanied by our armed forces, will be dissipated without lasting effects, as surely as the morning dew will vanish under the caress of the sun. The most dramatic examples, such as Somalia, have been very bloody, yet these are not the most instructive.

     Some Americans, though as yet not a sufficient number, have absorbed these truths. That’s why there’s been a retreat from reflexive interventionism among private citizens. But the implication that hasn’t yet been widely enough acknowledged is that just as we can’t go there and solve their problems for them, we’ll become hosts to those problems to the extent that we allow them to come here.

     In that essay I was principally concerned with the tide of illegal immigrants we suffered. Though it's attenuated somewhat this past year, we continue to bear a large burden brought on us by decades of laxity about border enforcement and the demise of the assumption of assimilation. This morning I'm looking at the syndrome in a different light.

     The very peoples that expect the U.S. to save them from whatever ills might befall them are equally strident about their "right" to come here – and to bring those ills with them by refusing to assimilate. Peoples that feel no charity toward suffering others – peoples that have been known to cheer when others suffer! – seek to come here and remake our nation into a facsimile of theirs. Do you think any of them have pondered, even briefly, what that would mean for America's future attitude toward the troubles of their homelands?

     Americans' charity is an essential component of our national identity – our Americanism. It partakes of our Christian ethics, our sense of personal and national well being, and our predominant good will toward others. It cannot outlast the loss of those things. Yet the major sociopolitical and economic trends of our time have eroded all three of them.

---

     Allow me another self-citation:

     I also remember a truly bile-stirring denunciation of the Bush Administration’s response by Leftist critic Robert Rivkin:

     Why hasn’t the Bush administration shown some imagination in convincing the world that Americans really care and are prepared to make a small sacrifice to help victims of this astonishingly destructive natural calamity? In the wake of the administration’s default, why hasn’t the Democratic “opposition” proposed something that will demonstrate to the world that Americans want to help and are not “stingy”? Especially these days, a dramatic proposal to assist victims of mass catastrophe might also improve our country’s tarnished image in many places in the world.

     Here’s a simple proposal that would capture the world’s attention, and which a majority of Americans would almost certainly support. President Bush should announce that because of the colossal losses suffered by millions of people in Southeast Asia and East Africa, he will make an exception to his promise not to raise taxes. Bush should propose a Tsunami Disaster Relief Surtax for 2004 and 2005, with very simple components that everyone can understand.

     For example, the president could propose a flat $50 surtax applicable to every American tax return with an adjusted gross income of between $25,000 and $40,000; a flat $75 surtax on every tax return with an adjusted gross income between $40,000 and $80,000; $100 for incomes over $80,000, and so on. This small assessment for two years would produce many billions of dollars, which could be placed into a fund which would support infrastructure repair and development over a period of at least 10 years in the stricken countries.

     (The original article is no longer reachable. The above is a transcription that appeared in a 2004 article at Eternity Road.)

     Yes, Gentle Reader, you read it right. Rivkin was actually proposing a tax on Americans specifically to benefit – drumroll, please -- non-Americans! If memory serves, we fought a bloody war to be free from that. Of course, I wasn’t around that long ago, but the histories all agree on it.

     But I want to draw your attention to one specific phrase in that disgusting article:

     ...a dramatic proposal to assist victims of mass catastrophe might also improve our country’s tarnished image in many places in the world.

     In other words, Americans should be saddled with a tax specifically so that non-Americans will like us more!

     Yet Leftists wonder that we want no more of them.

     Dystopic would immediately recognize the principle operating above. In giving it a memorable name, he's done the nation a service it does not yet appreciate. Yet the unarticulated recognition of how our generosity is used against us is a great part of what put Donald Trump in the White House.

---

     And now for a complete swerve: a few mildly good words about our "allies," those endlessly sniggering Europeans.

     To the best of my knowledge, the nations of Europe haven't demanded anything much from Americans lately, other than our submission to insane "carbon taxes" to combat the imaginary hazard of "climate change." Moreover, when they belittle us, it's usually about one of two subjects: American cultural exports, and our love of firearms. At this time, given the Islamic invasions they're suffering, many of them are probably bitterly regretful that they gave up their firearms. Concerning American cultural exports, I can only say, once more and with feeling, chacun a son gout.

     So at least they don't expect anything from us...at the moment. Okay, Euroweenies; laugh at our expense. You don't think much of us; we don't think much of you. But here's a friendly suggestion for the broadening of your viewpoint: Every now and then, look to the East. Take a good look at the nation that lies just beyond the former Soviet satellites. Think about the ruler of that nation and what he's done geopolitically these past ten years. Try to forecast his next moves and how the governments of your nations would respond. I'll say nothing more.

---

     As you can see, I'm no fan of the "world policeman" role the U.S. tacitly undertook after World War II. Now that the mission appears essentially impossible, a lot of folks yearn for those halcyon days of yore when it appeared that we were the world's power, that nothing we chose to oppose could stand against us. However, few of those yearners would willingly pay what it would take to regain that status...if, in fact, we ever possessed it.

     Besides, there was a lot of deceit built into it: a covert agenda of expanding the scope and heft of our political class under the overt one of maintaining "world peace." "Public men" will always want as large a "public" as they can muster. The "public men" of postwar America were merely more ambitious than any of their predecessors. They had mastered America, at least in their own minds. Next stop: the world.

     It wasn't businessmen fantasizing thus. American products and services had already reached every continent and had won approval from persons of every land. Our commerce really was ubiquitous. But politicians and their clients aren't much interested in commerce, except as a useful adjunct to their schemes.

     Popular sentiment found something agreeable in the idea of America as the world's guardian. Our political class marshaled it (excuse the pun) to its own purposes. And the blood and treasure of the greatest, most generous nation the world had ever seen was made to flow outward, to others' benefit and for others' use.

     An outward current not balanced by an inward one of equal magnitude cannot be maintained for long.

---

     Seventy years of outward flow, propelled by the frequent, strident suggestion that Americans have an obligation to help those of other lands, have weakened our nation and wearied our people. We're tired – and a portion of the fatigue arises from being often belittled, seldom appreciated.

     Americans' private generosity still exceeds that of any other nation. Yet like any effort that reaps unsatisfactory results, it can be quenched. Many of us have decided to redirect our charitable impulses back toward ourselves and our neighbors. There's a lot of good sense in that; charity really should begin at home, where the giver can observe the results and make whatever changes they mandate.

     It's at the national level that the problem is most acute. Our "public men" are unhappy with our desire to look after our own interests and let the rest of the world cope with its own problems. It limits their scope. It could mean that their names will receive a brief entry in the history books, if any. Besides, why should we have any say over the expenditure of our sons' lives and our hard-earned treasure? Where do we get off claiming a right to be left alone in peace and privacy?

     Perhaps this is all just an old man's ranting. Perhaps the weariness that comes with age is just too much with me this morning. All the same, I want no more of the world beyond our borders. Keep it away. Build the wall. End all foreign aid. Stop sending American military assets and troops to every canker on the globe. And for the love of God, stop treating the effusions and maneuvers of other governments and their satraps as something with which we should concern ourselves. Until they send expeditionary forces to our shores, let them kill, plunder, and oppress one another without our interference.

     That way, maybe we can all get some sleep.

Christian Ethics In Practice

     Now that I no longer solve other people’s problems for a living, I can allow my thought processes to prowl: to range hither and yon among the many stimuli available, carrying conceptual pollen from one to another, and then to watch, sometimes amusedly and at other times bemusedly, to see what hybrid might emerge. It’s about as close as a contemporary American can come to the job I’ve wanted most of my life: Vice President In Charge Of Thinking Good Thoughts. (Career-hunters be warned: there’s no money in it.)

     It’s been two years now since I retired from wage labor, yet I continue to be amazed at how an old movie, wedded to a seemingly unrelated article, can elicit new and potentially important ideas. But of course, the critical word in that sentence is seeming. The connection had to be there from the start; I just didn’t see it until I’d had some time to think.

     (Memo to me: Must write something about the terrible lack of time to think that afflicts so many Americans today. After thinking about it for a while, of course.)

---

     Yesterday’s essay coupled to the previous day’s tirade in a fascinating fashion. The “Preparations” piece is rather grim, while the “Shangri-la” piece has a great deal of hope in it. Yet they exhibit a fundamental concurrence. I said as much, obliquely, in the opening to the latter. It’s time to make the concurrence explicit.

     Superficially, the great shortcoming, in our nation and our world, is the lack of true Christian charity.

     When Lost Horizon’s Father Perreault says to Robert Conway that the world’s true hope is for “a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind,” he’s expressing the essence of Christian charity. Jesus of Nazareth stated it in a slightly different fashion: in the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and in the Second Great Commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Paul of Tarsus, in one of his few moments of complete lucidity, put it thus:

     Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if [there be] any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love [is] the fulfilling of the law. [Romans 13:8-10]

     The great challenge this presents us isn’t because Christian charity is complicated. Rather, it’s because we’re presented with so many seemingly compelling reasons to behave otherwise.

---

     “The State is based on threat.” – Illuminatus!

     Our world is hagridden by malevolences: agents of predation and violence. Some of them operate in the open: governments. There isn’t one government anywhere on Earth that doesn’t deserve to be destroyed, root and branch, and all its masters and its minions publicly condemned to sackcloth and ashes lifelong. Yes, that includes the 88,000-plus governments of these United States. Their evil cannot be offset by the trivial amounts of good they (accidentally and unintentionally) do.

     The primary aim of persons in government is the primary aim of “The High” as Orwell put it in 1984: “The aim of the High is to remain where they are.” Their master tactic is fear: specifically, engendering fear in their subjects:

• Fear of other governments;
• Fear of punishment for disobedience;
• Inducing their subjects to fear one another.

     The pattern reaches all the way back to the origin of states. Franz Oppenheimer found that in marauding predator bands that got tired of marauding and settled down to mulct their fattest victims in perpetuity. (Cf. The State) Consider the behavior of Eli Wallach’s raiders in The Magnificent Seven dispassionately. How, apart from not remaining in a single place, do those bandits differ from government tax collectors?

     Perversely, other governments and private predators are what make the exactions of one’s government seem acceptable. The aggregate provides stability to the individual components. They who operate through fear serve as one another’s allies and justifications. They also deprive us of the resources – material and emotional – with which we might otherwise practice Christian charity.

---

     There’s evil in the world apart from that of governments. There always has been; there will be until Man is no more. The awareness of our vulnerability to that evil, and the sense that we must guard against it, deflects us from positive and constructive relations with others. Charity and distrust are mutually antagonistic – and distrust nearly always wins the contest between them.

     The critical significance of community is its role in damping our fear and distrust of one another. We build communities largely without realizing it. The essential mechanism is the gradual acceptance – nearly always subconscious – that those around us are worthy of our trust.

     He whom we trust is easy to love, in the sense of the Golden Rule. We accept that he’s benevolently inclined toward us, which makes us capable of reciprocal benevolence. A community will form on that basis and no other.

     Yet there are limits to the operation of community. A community of a few hundred souls is plausible; a community of several thousand strains credulity. How can anyone know that many persons well enough to trust in their benevolence? The concatenative assemblage of community – Smith trusts Jones, and Jones trusts Davis, so Smith, reposing faith in Jones’s judgment, trusts Davis – becomes tenuous and weak after three links. When we add significant differences in language and customs, it becomes effectively impossible. We’re aware of this subconsciously as well. Otherwise we wouldn’t be “on guard” when away from our homes. We certainly wouldn’t casually venture beyond them, trusting in the Omnipotent State for our protection.

     The safety Americans once felt when abroad arose from the awareness of the tyrants of other lands of the great power of the United States to take vengeance for offenses done to it. Isaac Asimov captured this in fictional form in The Foundation Trilogy:

     [The lieutenant] motioned curtly to his men, "Take him."
     Toran felt the clown tearing at his robe with a maddened grip.
     He raised his voice and kept it from shaking, "I'm sorry, lieutenant; this man is mine."
     The soldiers took the statement without blinking. One raised his whip casually, but the lieutenant's snapped order brought it down.
     His dark mightiness swung forward and planted his square body before Toran, "Who are you?"
     And the answer rang out, "A citizen of the Foundation."
     It worked-with the crowd, at any rate. The pent-up silence broke into an intense hum. The Mule's name might excite fear, but it was, after all, a new name and scarcely stuck as deeply in the vitals as the old one of the Foundation - that had destroyed the Empire - and the fear of which ruled a quadrant of the Galaxy with ruthless despotism.
     The lieutenant kept face. He said, "Are you aware of the identity of the man behind you?"
     "I have been told he's a runaway from the court of your leader, but my only sure knowledge is that he is a friend of mine. You'll need firm proof of his identity to take him."
     There were high-pitched sighs from the crowd, but the lieutenant let it pass. "Have you your papers of Foundation citizenship with you?"
     "At my ship."
     "You realize that your actions are illegal? I can have you shot."
     "Undoubtedly. But then you would have shot a Foundation citizen and it is quite likely that your body would be sent to the Foundation - quartered - as part compensation. It's been done by other warlords."
     The lieutenant wet his lips. The statement was true.

     That Americans abroad no longer feel quite that safe arises from seventy years of federal government indifference toward the mistreatment of its citizens by such tyrants. Otherwise, Kim Jong-un and the ayatollahs who rule Iran would not have dared to mistreat Americans who’d dared to venture into their domains. Yet those obscenities bear a powerful lesson about community and its limits.

---

     Fear nullifies the charitable impulse. How can we be kind – to do unto him as we’d have him do unto us – to someone against whom we must guard ourselves? The thing is plainly impossible; the “ought” is impotent in the face of the “is.” Yet having established that, we are not finished with the problem.

     If you’ve been wondering what “seemingly unrelated article” set me off on this course, the moment for “the big reveal” has arrived:

     Everyone who has tried them tells me threesomes are difficult. And anyone can imagine that threesomes with the government are the most difficult of all. Suddenly it’s no longer a matter of whose elbow is in whose eye, but a matter of whose legal rights are getting stripped, which way the courts lean, and who is likely to lose his parental privileges and, likely, his liberty or at the very least his wealth.

     Which is why I find it absurdly rich of CNN (All the News Fit to Fake) to wonder why American couples are having less sex than they were 20 years ago.

     The article disingenuously roots around for an answer (so to put it, to coin a phrase) and comes up with several. It’s not that they’re wrong – precisely – it’s more that they determinedly ignore what is at the back of those obvious causes of the – ah – dry spell enveloping Americans.

     Please read it all. Among the influences Sarah gradually articulates is how the anxiety under which we labor is made manifest within our marriages and similarly intimate relations.

     Anxiety is stress. All stresses other than the purely physical wear the guise of anxiety. Cicero wrote that “No power is strong enough if it labors under the weight of fear.” Whether he had it in mind or not, that includes the power of sexual desire and attraction.

     Anxiety enervates. It synergizes with our other labors to drain away our energies – and don’t kid yourself; sex requires energy. Indeed, all desires and other impulses to action require energy to be actuated. If you don’t have it, you won’t act, no matter how beautiful your spouse or alluring her new negligee and perfume. And that’s not the end of the story.

     The anxious man naturally wants to feel less anxious...less burdened. But what if he comes to see his beloved as a source of burdens rather than a helpmeet? What if as he contemplates her, the difficulty of pleasing her looms larger than her attractions? Hasn’t that been a principal aim of the gender-war feminists for forty years and more? And doesn’t it transform her from an object of desire to yet another source of anxiety and stress?

     Not only does that anxiety affect relationships already formed; it also keeps them from forming in the first place:

     [W]omen aren’t going out into what they’ve been told is a rape culture, and men, particularly men in college – the prime reproductive age – don’t have to deal with kangaroo courts and mattress girls should their partners decide that the sex wasn’t entirely to their satisfaction and thereby retroactively withdraw consent and claim they were raped. Do you blame them? When public officials and the cultural power structures spend so much time convincing both sexes the other is out to get them, we should thank our lucky stars some young people are still willing to risk sex, despite everything.

     More fear, less love and sex. Less love and sex, less children...and less Christian charity. Especially when we note the intimate connection between fear and hatred.

---

     I could go on. Perhaps I will, at a later date. But I believe the point has been made.

     For Christian charity to have a dominant role in life, that our homes and communities might less resemble bunkers and more resemble Shangri-la, life must be largely cleansed of fear. That will require that we do away with the things that make us fear. How that might be accomplished, I cannot say. Anyway, it’s time for Mass. Be well.

Recent Development in re “A Warning”

     If you’ve read “A Warning,” consider the matter as serious as do I, and have wondered what would come of it, here’s an update.

     Just this morning at the conclusion of Mass, I spoke to Monsignor Christopher Heller, the pastor at St. Louis de Montfort parish and a highly respected clergyman. When I related the matter to him, he was astonished and appalled. He seemed quite as offended as I, perhaps more so, by the idea that parish charitable donations might be going to any purpose other than charity to the needy of our district. He promised to delve into the matter personally and immediately.

     I’ve just received a call from Father Chris – and when I say “just received,” I mean that I’ve only just rung off with him. He says he’s in shock over the matter. I expect he’ll bring it to the appropriate conclusion.

     Concerning trust in the honesty and utility of charitable institutions, religious or otherwise, it’s clear that even one who donates only food and clothing, never cash, can and sometimes will feel his trust shaken. Only swift and public corrective action can undo such a disturbance of one’s trust. Be guided appropriately.

A Warning

     The charitable impulse can easily be transformed into a fury that sets heads to rolling.

     My parish – St. Louis de Montfort in Sound Beach, NY – maintains, as so many Catholic parishes do, an Outreach pantry, intended to assist the needy with free food and other consumables while (hopefully) they struggle back to a condition of self-sustenance. My fellow parishioners are generous souls; the pantry shelves are virtually always kept full, even though an average of 150 families partake of the bounty each week.

     Sounds good, right? Christian charity in action, just as the Redeemer prescribed. Well, once in a great while things are not so good.

     Four weeks ago, the parish bulletin listed one of the pantry’s needs as “pork & beans.” Actually, the listing was PORK & BEANS, that we parishioners might grasp the intensity of the need. Accordingly, the next time I was near a supermarket I purchased half a dozen 1 lb. cans of pork & beans, a few other items listed as Outreach needs, brought them to the pantry, and thought no more about it.

     The next Sunday, PORK & BEANS appeared once more as the pantry’s principal need. So the next time I went grocery shopping, I purchased a dozen 1 lb. cans of pork & beans, a couple of other items on the bulletin’s Outreach list, brought them to the pantry, and thought no more about it.

     Sunday June the 18th: the Outreach pantry still listed PORK & BEANS as its principal need. I was beginning to grow a bit concerned. So I made a special trip to the supermarket and bought 24 1 lb. cans of pork & beans. (I’m sure you can see the pattern developing.) I brought them to the pantry and told the supervisor that “if I see pork & beans in next Sunday’s bulletin, I’m going to be very cross. Tell whoever’s eating all the pork & beans to eat a vegetable now and then.” She assured me that it would not appear in the June 25th bulletin.

     That assurance was false.

     This morning at 9:30 AM EDT, I brought 48 1 lb. cans of pork & beans to the Outreach pantry. The expressions that greeted me ranged from poker-faced to stunned. I dropped the case – approximately 70 lb, gross – on the sorting table, fixed the Outreach supervisor with my best gimlet eye, and said, “Where’s all the pork & beans going?”

     The supervisor said, “There was a big barbecue.”

     It took me about a nanosecond to go from relative calm to incipient stroke.

     “The food donated to this pantry is supposed to be for the local needy,” I said. I put more effort into controlling my demeanor than I’ve ever put into anything except concealing my glee at having just been dealt a straight flush. It proved insufficient. “It is not supposed to be used to supply institutional functions!”

     The supervisor smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Well, you know.”

     I departed swiftly, before I could burst a blood vessel.

     That supervisor doesn’t know what kind of agony she’s in for. I intend to spread the news of this all over the parish – with her name attached.

     Fellow Christians, are you sure your charitable donations are actually doing charity? Really sure? If you were to discover otherwise, how would you react?

     Beware the charitably inclined Christian who discovers that he’s been duped. Few creatures are more dangerous. St. Louis de Montfort is about to experience a demonstration.

When Good People Do Bad Things

     Yes, it’s a play of sorts on the title of this book. It was a very popular “inspirational” when it was first published. However, as the great Robert A. Heinlein has told us (and as I fancifully exploited in this tome) the universe consists of dualities: pairs of opposed forces, tendencies, values, what-have-you. And so on this fourth Sunday of Advent in the Year of Our Lord 2016, I propose to meet Harold Kushner’s “inspirational” with its polar opposite (feel free to call it a “perspirational”).

---

     As a rule, humans tend not to like being ordered around. For some, that approaches an absolute value: one offense is enough to bring us to blows. I’m one such: an anarchist from my genes to my few remaining hair follicles. My greatest sorrow was the discovery that government is inevitable. (See these books for a fictional exegesis. And before you ask: Yes, there will be at least one more volume in that series.)

     Yet there are many perfectly good-hearted people who cannot restrain their need to “fix” others’ lives. And in one of life’s more painful ironies, they have a habit of attaching themselves to nasty old bastards like me, who’d as soon shoot them as say hello.

     I’m not talking about politicians or other government functionaries. They have a disease that operates at a higher plane of abstraction. The folks I have in mind don’t seek official positions; they merely seek individual victims upon whom to establish their personal benevolent dictatorships. And they just about always succeed in finding and fastening on one of us who’d run to the ends of the Earth to avoid them.

     Good people doing bad things...out of a desire to “help.”

---

     Quite a number of folks, however, do operate at that “higher plane of abstraction” without feeling any desire to attain a public office. These “There oughta be a law” types can become very well known. Some become regionally notorious and strive to capitalize on their notoriety. Others merely annoy the living daylights out of their live-and-let-live neighbors, repeatedly, over one “issue” after another.

     The creation of “issues” by such persons often remains unseen right up to the point where it evokes a town council or county legislature meeting aimed at invading someone’s rights. Moreover, all too often that meeting of officious “public servants” takes place sub rosa, such that the affected parties remain ignorant of it until it’s produced a fait accompli.

     I have in mind one such person who inflicted the Army Corps of Engineers on a neighbor who dared to dig out, line, equip, and stock a koi pond in his backyard. Apparently there are laws and associated regulations that mandate such intrusions on anyone who dares to imagine that putting such a thing on his own property is his own BLEEP!ing business and no one else’s. You can’t imagine the tumult that inflicted upon the neighborhood involved. The initiator was unmoved. “The law is the law,” he liked to say...and he sincerely believed he was helping his neighbor to stay out of trouble with the law.

     Good people doing bad things...in the name of “justice.”

---

     Finally for today, let’s consider the thoughtlessly “compassionate.” In its most common form of ill thought out “generosity,” it’s produced larger social maladies than anything but warfare. Yet we are regularly bombarded with exhortations to “compassion” as if there were no imaginable way that seemingly positive attribute might go wrong.

     Most of the “charity” urged upon us today is destructive. Yet most of those who exhort us to ever greater “compassion” toward “the needy” have no stain on their souls. The defect is in their understanding.

     A brilliant essay written by a dear friend puts it beautifully:

     Help can cripple or kill you.

     There aren't many people who get that. It's so easy to allow someone else to carry your burden for you. It's so easy to allow yourself to become dependent on other people's kindness and generosity. If you're cursed with an accepting nature, you can become a charity addict as easily as breathing. It forecloses your future; everything you might have achieved slips away, forgotten in the relief of not having to work for your own security or prosperity.

     It's very important -- critical -- not to help when help is not needed, or not appreciated, or not wanted, or wanted much too much. I know, my Church says otherwise, but I have to disagree. Charity to good people in sudden, unexpected need that's not their fault, who are uncomfortable at being the objects of charity, is usually all right. Charity to people who've never shown any initiative or prudence is always wrong. Good-hearted people have done more harm through generosity than all the murderers that have ever lived. Maybe even including the government murderers.

     In 2014, the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services, supposedly chartered to alleviate poor health and material want among the less fortunate, spent $450 billion on health care for its clients and an additional $175 billion on assorted “public assistance” disbursements. In addition, private charitable organizations – firms whose nominal reason for being is to provide help to the “needy” –take in billions of dollars each year. In most cases, most of the money goes to salaries and “operating expenses,” but even what remains usually does more harm than good. Thomas Mackay put it best more than a century ago:

     ...the cause of pauperism is relief. We shall not get rid of pauperism by extending the sphere of State relief...On the contrary, its adoption would increase our pauperism, for as is often said, we can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for. [Thomas Mackay, “Methods of Social Reform”]

     In consequence of all this “compassion,” more persons depend on “charity” for part or all of their sustenance than ever before in American history. The “compassionate” among us claim that the trend proves that more money is urgently required. I have no doubt that most of them are sincerely well-intentioned – those not employed by a government agency, at least – but the harm they’ve done and continue to do is staggering.

     Good people doing an enormously bad thing – destroying the initiative and self-reliance of others – out of unthinking “compassion.”

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     Primum non nocere, runs the physicians’ maxim: First, do no harm. Good, sincerely well-intentioned people are not exempt from this constraint. He who does harm is responsible for that consequence even if he thought he was doing good. Yet our social devolution has gone so far that we keep silent rather than point that out to those whose good intentions come a-cropper. Indeed, it’s considered the height of rudeness to hurt such persons’ feelings.

     The New Year approaches, and with it the usual exhortations to make resolutions to improve this or that about oneself. For many of us, a resolution to mind one’s own business and trust others to mind theirs is the best one could make – a priceless if belated Christmas gift to those around them.

The Ultimate Monopolist

     There are days I find myself wondering, “Would the aftermath of a full-scale nuclear war be any worse than this?” It can take me a while to dispel such a mood. It was brought on this morning by the realization that Frederic Bastiat, though he was right, lacked imagination enough to envision the horrors that would one day come:

     Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it....Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim—when he defends himself—as a criminal....

     But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

     That’s simple enough, isn’t it? It’s a test any halfwit can apply. Its answer would be unequivocal, impossible to “reinterpret.” Nevertheless, it overlooks a sheaf of important cases.

     There’s a species of legal plunder in which the stolen goods have no recipient.

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     Here’s the story that triggered my apocalypticism:

     The American Royal’s World Series of Barbecue is a longstanding tradition for community members of Kansas City, Missouri. Since 1899, the event has attracted the most talented barbecue chefs from all corners of the state, who gather annually to show off their skills. With so many BBQ experts in one place, there tends to be a fair amount of leftover food once the festivities come to a close.

     Hating to waste such a vast amount of quality barbecue, some of the event’s BBQ gurus got together and founded the charitable group, Kookers Kare. Partnering with the Harvesters Community Food Network, Kookers Kare has made a tradition of donating the leftover food to local homeless shelters at the end of each annual event.

     This year, the two groups collected over 3,000 pounds of meat and 1,200 pounds of sides, all bound for a local nonprofit organization called Hope City, where it was to be served to over 3,000 homeless citizens in need.

     That sounds extra-tasty good, doesn’t it? Not only would this private, wholly voluntary organization feed the needy, it would feed them first-class barbecue! That’s not quite enough to make me wish I were one of the intended beneficiaries, but reading it did give me a warm glow. However, we’re not quite done with the story:

     However, the Kansas City Health Department put the kibosh on Kookers Kare’s attempts to feed the homeless before anyone was even able to enjoy the food.

     Claiming they had no fore knowledge of this charitable tradition, the health department forbid the food from being served to the needy. Suspiciously, the inspectors just happened to be doing a random inspection of Hope City the day the BBQ arrived.

     “All of that food was uninspected, so that makes it from an unapproved source, it cannot be served to the public,” Kansas City Health Department Operations Manager Joe Williamson said in response to the department’s decision to stop the food from being consumed.

     The health department did not stop at simply forbidding the food from being served, they demanded that it be destroyed immediately. Those who had worked diligently to collect the food were forced to douse over 3,000 pounds of award-winning barbecue food with bleach, in order to ensure its destruction and appease the local health department. Meanwhile, 3,000 homeless individuals went without a meal that day.

     If that doesn’t enrage you to the threshold of violence, check your pulse: you may have died and not noticed.

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     I once encountered a young man who claimed that “government is for doing the things we can’t do for ourselves.” I have no idea where he got that notion, though I have my suspicions. I wonder what he would think of the actions of the Kansas City Health Department as chronicled above.

     The original rationale for involving government agencies in charity was that private action is insufficient: i.e., that only government could guarantee that all needy persons would receive the assistance they require. We were entertained with imagery of the most macabre sort: streets filled with the corpses of beggars who’d starved to death, because the private charities that had always filled needy bellies had run out of food, or had otherwise “missed them.” Complementary to the horror images were images of clean, efficient government offices to which everyone could go for sustenance at need. Somehow these organs of the State would succeed in discriminating between the importunate idler and the genuinely deserving sufferer, such that none of the former would be served yet none of the latter would be turned away.

     It’s quite possible that those who proposed government involvement in charitable action were moved entirely by wholesome motives. It’s even more likely that, like Bastiat, they lacked enough imagination to foresee what would follow. For the State is ruled by a particular dynamic: to grow without limit. When it enters into an enterprise already occupied by private individuals and organizations, its natural tendency is to expel them by force.

     In commenting on the antitrust laws, Isabel Paterson made the plainest case imaginable:

     Government cannot "restore competition" or "ensure" it. Government is monopoly; and all it can do is to impose restrictions which may issue in monopoly, when they go so far as to require permission for the individual to engage in production. This is the essence of the Society-of-Status.

     Governments view a monopoly over charitable action as no less desirable than a monopoly over the use of coercive force. Indeed, such a monopoly is exceedingly valuable to a government, for it furthers every government’s fondest dream: to insert itself into every variety of human interaction, such that private citizens are unable to communicate or trade without State mediation.

     If generosity itself is a subject for government “regulation,” what aspect of human life is omitted from its scope?

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     I’ve cited more than once the efforts of government worshippers to take over all retirement funds. The rationale proffered for such a move differs little from that for a government takeover of all soup kitchens: “You can’t trust private actors. You can only trust the State.” That after six thousand years of recorded history there are still persons who accept that statement is striking counterevidence to the claims of the Darwinists. Yet such persons do exist; I’ve met them.

     “Redistribution of the wealth” has been a rallying cry of the government worshippers for a century and more. Did those of Marx’s time envision a point at which, rather than “redistributing” extra food, governments would command its destruction rather than allow the penurious to have it? For no more than fifty years after Marx’s death, our federal government did exactly that...under the pretense of “price support” for agricultural products.

     What a government once did supposedly to “help the farmers,” it now does to “protect the public” from the danger of award-winning barbecue. One rationale will serve quite as well as the other. What really matters is that the State possess a monopoly undreamed of by any corporate titan: unbounded and irresistible power over all things. Not even charitable action will it permit to escape its aegis.

     Perhaps it’s time for me to lie down and close my eyes for a bit.

Degradations: A Sunday Rumination

     It may be that there are things Man was not meant to know, but of this I am certain: There are things no man wants to know. Yet some of those things are essentials, bits of knowledge without which a life is markedly incomplete, sometimes to the point of being unworkable.

     One of the essentials that the average man strains mightily never to learn is the abysmal depth to which degradation – including self-imposed degradation – can descend.

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     It’s been my cross to know people who seemed to be striving to plumb the depths of degradation. Two are most vivid in memory. One sought mindlessness through immersion in the flesh: sex with as many strangers as he could entice into his bed. The other embraced filth: he created surroundings for himself so disgusting that they could not be worsened.

     Both those persons had been blessed with substantial intellects. They were fully aware of what they were doing. They might have been mentally ill, but they could not claim that “it was all a mistake,” that “I had no idea what I’d done to myself.” And both came to unhappy ends.

     For a long time afterward, I flogged myself about what I might have done to help them. In neither case did I ever come up with anything. In one, I eventually saw myself as one of his several enablers, who ought to have known better. It’s been a source of regret for some years.

     Degradation can look incomprehensible from the outside. Indeed, it usually does, for one who is unafflicted can never grasp the entirety of the degraded person’s background or mental state. Of course that doesn’t change the reality of the condition. However, it does tempt the man of good will to do well meant but poorly thought out things, out of a sincere desire to help. I’d wager that everyone who’s ever lived has felt or will feel such a temptation.

     As much as we want to help, that’s an objective: i.e., a goal to be sought within the confines of physical, moral, and ethical constraints. And foremost among the ethical constraints God has laid upon all of us is this one: Don’t make things worse.

     The creed of Alcoholics Anonymous holds that the alcoholic must “hit bottom” before he can regain the clarity and humility required to face his disease in its enormity. So it is with every species of self-degradation. The degraded one must descend so far that he can no longer hide his sickness from himself. Until he’s fallen that low, he will continue to believe that his condition is one he can correct at any time, by himself. Therefore, he will regard any aid offered to him as gratuitous – dispensable.

     Are there exceptions? Possibly. But I haven’t known any, nor has anyone with whom I’ve discussed the subject.

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     Christian thought and teaching exhorts us to charity toward the less fortunate. Charity – the care for another that sprints from caritas, benevolent emotional involvement with him – is not exempt from the “Don’t make things worse” constraint. Moreover, among the “less fortunate” are many whose condition is of their own making. The only possible form of charity toward such persons is to tell them what they need to hear and then stand well back. All else is an enabler’s folly.

     Even telling a self-degraded man what he “needs to hear” is pointless unless he’s already grasped his sickness for himself. He’ll dismiss it as meddling, an outsider’s uncomprehending intrusion into “stuff I can handle by myself.” The benevolence that animated it will usually be invisible to him. He might say “I know you mean well,” but inside he’ll be thinking “Stay out of my affairs.”

     This is a critical qualifying clause to the Christian exhortation to charity. It couples to another aspect of charitable action that’s all too seldom addressed: Are you sincerely trying to help him, or are you more concerned with gaining merit for yourself? Like all the rest of us, the unfortunate man exists for his own sake. He must not be treated as an opportunity to amass “brownie points with God.”

     How often have you heard a priest, minister, or lay preacher mention that little codicil?

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     I’ve only scratched the surface of this subject. Many side trails lead from it into other regions of Christian life and thought. For today, suffice it to say that self-degradation – and in the United States of America, it’s by far the most common variety – is something to be treated with maximum delicacy. No matter how well meant, meddling in the affairs of a self-degraded man before he’s “hit bottom” will do him no good. More likely than not, it will set him back. The other elements in his emotional mix, including his vestigial pride and his all too human stubbornness, will make him react against you.

     Your desire to help is admirable. Would that everyone were as benevolently disposed toward his fellows! But as the physicians among us would say, Primum non nocere: First, do no harm.

     May God bless and keep you all.