Leftist ideologues and proponents of socialist policies are outraged by the energetic slashing of government waste on the part of DOGE and the current administration. The more vocal and aggressive the left’s reaction is, the more effective and needed the measures it attacks happen to be.
There are two kinds of people with respect to the government’s role: those who want to be taken care of and those who cherish independence and self-reliance. History has shown that big governments only succeed in taking away our freedoms, while personal kindness and private benefaction are much more successful in helping those who cannot help themselves.
As early as 1891, Pope Leo XIII warned against the dangerous allure of socialism.
[T]he socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.Pope Leo XIII
Today, however, even in the free world, millions believe that government-enforced redistribution of wealth is the key to alleviating human suffering.
My husband and I had the good fortune to establish, in my home country of Bulgaria, a nonprofit foundation that promotes academic cooperation and American values. One day, we decided to clean up the little park adjacent to the foundation’s building. The park had been state-owned socialist property for many decades.
Although Bulgaria rejected communism with the rest of Eastern Europe after the Fall of the Berlin Wall—and subsequently joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) as a member of the free world—old socialist habits still persisted, such as treating public property like wasteland. The park near our foundation’s building was overgrown with weeds, the playground equipment was shattered, and the area was filled with monstrous piles of hazardous trash.
My husband bought an American-style lawn mower and proceeded to remove the trash and clear the weeds. At first, the neighbors were skeptical and ignored our efforts. Gradually, however, they emerged from their homes and began to regard us with benevolent curiosity. Two little boys deliberated:
“This must be the European Union,” one of them wisely remarked. Understandably, people attributed Bulgaria’s newly found prosperity to joining NATO and the EU. (In those early days, the EU was understood more as a free travel and trade zone, beneficial for small and relatively indigent countries; it had not yet developed the hypertrophied leftist bureaucracy it represents today.)
My husband chuckled, “No, it’s actually NATO,” proudly emphasizing the fact that we were a North American charity.
We also paid contractors to fix the playground equipment, and the park gained a normal appearance. Then a beautiful thing happened. The mothers and grandmothers from the neighborhood began to clean the park daily. They kept it in pristine shape, for it was their children and grandchildren who played in it. People care little about no man’s land, but when they are personally involved in benefaction, they take pride in their work and gladly contribute to a common cause with a palpable sense of belonging.
Whether or not welfare may be a good thing in certain cases, the fact remains that we need capitalism-produced wealth to support a welfare system. While a certain amount of government funding could be used beneficially, it would only succeed if managed wisely and locally, with a specific focus on what works in each case and a clear vision of the values it supports.
An over-grown government creates a tyrannical bureaucracy and a mountain-high national debt, as recently experienced in the United States. A limited and efficient government, however, could enact policies that encourage and enable private initiative and benefaction.
A case-in-point is provided by American public schools, whose funding has increased substantially since the 1960s, but the quality of education has dramatically deteriorated, while anti-American indoctrination has flourished throughout the system. Contrast this with the numerous successful instances of private schools, micro-schooling, or home schools.
One need only compare South and North Korea to realize the myriad advantages of capitalism over socialism. Socialism in its pure form enslaves and dehumanizes people. In its parasitic form, when entrenched in a democratic framework and supported by free enterprise, it may not be murderous but is highly inefficient and ineffective in creating opportunities for a better life.
Traditional community values and faith-based conservatism, on the other hand, advocate compassion and kindness toward individual human beings, not abstract social groups. The United States offers countless examples of philanthropy where individual donors, as well as both religious and secular charities, have done a tremendous amount of good. The reason this model works is that philanthropists are passionate about their causes and feel personally invested in the work they are doing.
That is why streamlining government efficiency and restoring traditional communities can go a long way toward improving lives through voluntary and meaningful philanthropy—philanthropy that encourages freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility, unlike government handouts driven by a self-serving, and often destructive, ideology.
In his farewell address, President Reagan reminded us:
“We the People” are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast….But back in the 1960s, when I began, it seemed to me that we’d begun reversing the order of things—that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, “Stop.” I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics:As government expands, liberty contracts.
Once again, history repeats itself, and we find ourselves facing a brief window of opportunity to choose government efficiency over bureaucracy and voluntary compassion over socialist welfare.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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