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April 29, 2006
Forced charity is no charity at all
Tamara K has it right when it comes to talk of abolishing FEMA and replacing it with another agency.
I'm with James Madison on this one:
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article in the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..... With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
It makes one look like a savage to say so, but if your house burns down, blows over, or floats away, it's not the job of the federal government to fix it for you. Charity is one thing, but federal tax dollars coerced at 1040-point from a single working mother of two in Dubuque (and then filtered through a morbidly obese federal agency) to rebuild your bungalow in Destin is not charity, okay? It's extortion.
The Senate panel was half right: FEMA needs to go. But it needs to stay gone, not come back in drag.
It brings to mind the same folks who live in flood plains, refuse to buy flood insurance, then expect government bailouts (i.e., your money and mine) to help them rebuild in the same damn place.
James Madison had it right, and it speaks poorly of our national character that we've bought into the idea that the all-powerful, all-knowing Daddy Gummint will make it all better.
Posted by Mike Lief at April 29, 2006 06:30 PM
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