Charity Begins At Home

I don't think I'm as callous and uncaring as you make me out to be, but I can see where you got that impression from reading my blogs. The thing is that we talk mostly about national and international issues, over which neither of us has a whole lot of control. I have helped lots of people over the years, family, friends, neighbors, and total strangers, and lots of people like that have helped me. When you drive a 4WD pickup and live in the North Country, you frequently get the opportunity to help people out of ditches and other predicaments, and to not do so would violate the Code of the Road. I don't get around much anymore, but I still get to help my neighbors with my truck or my tractor on occasion, and they have done the same for me. The mere ownership of equipment like that doesn't prevent you from getting stuck you know, it just means that, when you do get stuck, it takes somebody with similar equipment to pull you out.

My parents used to give a lot of money to various charities, but I don't, and my parents even cut back their contributions over the years. For one thing, it has been claimed that many of those big charity organizations spend most of the money they take in on efforts to raise more money, and you have no way of knowing if any of it actually gets to the people they claim to be helping. I suppose they're not all scams like that, but it's difficult to sort them out. Another thing is that they give your name to other organizations, resulting in more and more appeals showing up in your mailbox. I understand that you're not crazy about those private charities either, you believe that the government should take care of everybody. The thing about the government is that they can't give money to anybody without first taking it away from somebody else, often without their consent.

I usually vote for my own best interests. If everybody voted for their own best interests, it seems the best interests of the majority would be served. I don't know how you can vote for the best interests of everybody. For one thing, everybody doesn't want the same things, and some people don't even know what they want. How can you know what's good for everybody when everybody doesn't even know themselves what's good for them? You might presume that the world would be a better place if everybody lived in tall buildings like you do. Indeed, I seem to remember you saying something like that at least once before. Well, what if everybody doesn't want to live like that? Would you force them at gunpoint? What about their emotions, don't they count?

As if we weren't already having enough trouble with the Mexicans, now your man Obama wants to bring in a whole bunch of Islamic types. Sure I feel sorry for those poor people, but what about our own poor people? Europe is already over run with people like that. Let's make it unanimous, abandon Europe to the infidels and bring the native Europeans here as refugees. It seems like it wouldn't make any difference in the grand scheme of things, the numbers would be the same, as long as everybody finds a home somewhere.