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Report from the Front: Charity begins where government stops.
By Edward Hudgins
The dangers of government involvement in civil society were seen this week in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. Connecticut's government allows its employees to have money deducted from their pay to go to charitable organizations. But the venerable Boys Scouts is not on the list. Why? A federal court has upheld an exclusion of the Scouts from the approved list because the group bars gays, which violates the state's anti-discrimination laws. One need not agree with the Scouts to see the danger of allowing governments to decide which politically correct groups get government favors.
In a related story, this week also unfortunately saw the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee restoring $100 million in funds for the federal government corporation AmeriCorps, which will send much of the money to the states so that a 20,000 young people can be paid to "volunteer" to do service to society. An Associated Press photo of young program supporters, shouting, fists raised, in front of the Rhode Island state house in Providence demanding full funding, eloquently illustrated how governments limit freedom and seduce the philosophically weak into the morality of thieves " take it from the taxpayers and give it to us" - and altruists - "only if we help others are we moral."
Report from the Front: Charity begins where government stops.
By Edward Hudgins
The dangers of government involvement in civil society were seen this week in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. Connecticut's government allows its employees to have money deducted from their pay to go to charitable organizations. But the venerable Boys Scouts is not on the list. Why? A federal court has upheld an exclusion of the Scouts from the approved list because the group bars gays, which violates the state's anti-discrimination laws. One need not agree with the Scouts to see the danger of allowing governments to decide which politically correct groups get government favors.
In a related story, this week also unfortunately saw the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee restoring $100 million in funds for the federal government corporation AmeriCorps, which will send much of the money to the states so that a 20,000 young people can be paid to "volunteer" to do service to society. An Associated Press photo of young program supporters, shouting, fists raised, in front of the Rhode Island state house in Providence demanding full funding, eloquently illustrated how governments limit freedom and seduce the philosophically weak into the morality of thieves " take it from the taxpayers and give it to us" - and altruists - "only if we help others are we moral."
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"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages adn cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." (Ayn Rand)

"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages adn cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." (Ayn Rand)


