[a fool in paradise]

You misstate my remarks.

I do not say “no mercy”.

I say the government does not need to provide.

Charity comes from the heart. There is no charity in forced taxation.

When taxes increase you will see a decrease in charitable giving.

[DannyTN]

There are those that would like to push the problem off entirely onto charitable Christians. But the poor are a civil problem as Thomas Jefferson once noted.

The scriptures I posted earlier, indicate that the Lord expects BOTH governments and individuals to provide. You may be right that one impacts the other, but neither can wash their hands of the poor without consequences.

No one claims paying taxes is charity. Governmental decisions to give to the poor are charity. And such decisions come from the hearts of the citizenry and their elected officials. Again it must be kept in balance.

You could argue as no doubt many have that such governmental charity is not in the enumerated powers, but you would be going against precedents set by the very first congress that provided both charity to indians as well as disaster relief to cities.

[yarddog]

I despise the welfare mess this country has gotten into as much as anyone. I have personally reported what I thought was food stamp fraud and suspect nothing was ever done about it.

There is another side tho. All one has to do is look at Britain before the Victorian age. Horror stories of the poor were absolutely incredible. Private charities did what they could but they were not even close to enough.

As someone else said, there are extremes on both sides. Right now we are on the extreme side towards Socialism. I want to get the government out of basically being the whole way of life for much of the country but not to the extent that good honest people die because of poverty when it is not necessary.