opinion. Of course, it is easier to be optimistic when therenare parents and friends who will pick you up and dust younoff, no matter what you’ve done. “When you have to gonthere, they have to take you in.”nIt is one of the marks of family and community life thatnindividuals are not judged chiefly on their merits. Who younare and whom you know take precedence over what you canndo. The advocates of the welfare state would have us extendnthat principle to the entire United States; others deny thatnnational boundaries have any relevance: our obligation is tonthe world—subhuman as well as human — not just to thatnsmall part of it that we are born into. People who write onnthese topics in social ethics are fond of hypothetical scenariosnlike the overloaded lifeboat: whom shall I choose tonsave — my pregnant wife, Gandhi, Einstein, or a dog thatnhas come to rely upon my goodwill?nDifferent philosophers give different answers, and if therenis an occasional advocate for the wife, it is on grounds thatnhave nothing to do with being one flesh or with the oldnnotion that the family is the indispensable seedbed of thencommononwealth. No, if we choose the helpmeet over thengymnosophist or the German shepherd, it will be because ofnsome contractual agreement we have made with each other.nWe hear a great deal these days about earth as a lifeboat ornas a spaceship, by which the propagandists mean that we arenall, however many billions of us are on this planet, in thisnthing together and that no one should be selfish enough tonlook out for the interests of his family and neighborsnexclusively or even to put them above the fate of the starvingnbillions of Asia and Africa.nWhile it is altogether fitting and proper to ridicule thennonsense written by Harvard professors calling themselvesnphilosophers, our obligation to the poor is not a jokingnmatter. “Ye have the poor always with you” is one of thenhard sayings of the Bible. It is important to remember thencontext. A woman had just poured an expensive oil uponnJesus’ head, much to the annoyance of the disciples whonwould have preferred to sell the unguent and spend thenmoney on the poor. At the very least, Jesus’ rebuke wasndesigned to remind his followers that relieving poverty,nhowever much it is a serious obligation, is not the highestnobligation imposed upon humanity: “But me,” he warnednthem, “ye have not always.”nMatthew, who records the incident, makes a point ofnsaying it took place directly after the sermon on the talantsnand the day of judgment, when the failure to feed thenhungry and clothe the naked will constitute grounds forneverlasting damnation. Most relief plans and welfare programsnwere undertaken in response to this Christian visionnof obligation to the poor. If modern times have beenncharacterized by uprooted families, self-seeking individualists,nand decaying communities, the ideal of the welfare statenwas in principle more like the City of God than like anynhuman society known from history.nThe good side of the various wars on poverty up untilnrecently was their vision of national community. FromnBismarck to the architects of the New Deal and the GreatnSociety, the ethical justification for welfare lay in whatnRichard Titmuss (a leading welfare proponent in Britain)ndescribed as “the expressed wish of all the people to assistnthe survival of some people.” Other British theorists havenbeen even more explicit in connecting the provision ofnwelfare with citizenship. There is, in the words of T.H.nMarshall, a positive “right to welfare” that is inseparablenfrom one’s status as a citizen. On this view, the rights ofncitizenship include “the right to share to the full in the socialnheritage and to live the life of a civilized being according tonthe standards prevailing in society.”nThe advantage of such a standard is that we can never runnout of disadvantaged citizens, so long as there are peoplenwho prefer Sting to Mozart. But give the left (especially thenBritish left) its due. They have framed the problem quitenproperly as a question of civil (not human) obligation: whatndo we owe our fellow citizens, as opposed to our fellownmen? That we have such an obligation, no one but annideologue can doubt. There are few societies in which thenbetter-off refuse to share their surplus with the luckless andnthe lazy. Such charity has its limits, but a pygmy will notnallow one of his fellows to starve any more than a Scotsnhighlander or a Homeric king will turn a stranger away fromnhis door.nOf course, if welfare is a civil right, then we must look fornthe corresponding civil duties imposed upon the recipient ofnpublic generosity. A private gift can be conferred with nonstrings attached, but no one — not the President, notnCongress, and certainly not the unelected bureaucrats whonpreside over the system — can presume to squander thenpeople’s money without insisting upon reciprocity. Thenmost obvious requirements were touched upon a fewnmonths ago. Of all citizens we require lawful behavior andnvarious forms of public service. Of the nation’s dependents,nwe should insist upon suspension of their right to use thenpolitical process to increase their benefits, i.e., the rights ofnsuffrage and petition. Some form of workfare — except innthe case of welfare mothers — is also owed the Americannpeople, and one might conceive of certain other stipulations,nsuch as changing the place of residence from the inner citiesnwhich serve as fortresses of vice and violence among thendependent classes.nWith such requirements, the cities and states of Americancould well afford to be far more generous in their provisionnfor the poor—especially if we fired nearly all of thenmiddle-class social workers and administrators who siphonnoff the vast majority of welfare funds to pay their ownnsalaries. But what we as a people owe to ourselves, we mostndecidedly do not owe to the world. There must be a directnrelationship between the amount of wealth a society isnwilling to transfer to its poorer citizens and the degree ofnstrictness in its definition of citizenship. Otherwise thengenerous state will find itself a mecca for the deserving andnthe undeserving poor. When the Athenians, suddenly richnfrom the fruits of empire, began to distribute some of theirnwealth to the poorer classes, they also made a pointnof restricting citizenship to the free children of citizennparents.nThe British theory of welfare is the most coherent and thenmost plausible that has been advanced. By this light, ournobligation to our own citizens is clear. (How that obligationnis to be discharged is, of course, quite another matter.) Ofncourse, when and if they are able, our fellow citizens will payntaxes, defend us in war, and in general shoulder their sharenof the burden. But what of aliens—legal and illegal—whatnnnAUGUST 1988 / 9n