great welfare lie we keep repeating. What, after all, is welfare?rnLiterally, it is well-being, a eondition whieh each man mustrndefine for himself and which no government can proide.rn”Social insurance,” “social security,” “social justice,” and “humanrnservices” are all equally meaningless phrases used torndisguise the alarming growth of go’crnment income andrngovernment poyver. If we mean to talk about making a decentrnprovision for the poor, the relevant word is charity, which is arnterm of Christian moral theology.rnAs natural men—pagans or atheists—we do have obligationsrnto fainiK and friends, but to strangers we owe nothing. The attemptrnof contemporary philosophers to construct a philosophicalrnjustification for charity would fall on deaf ears in anyrnsociety that had not received the Jewish Scriptures or thernChristian Gospel. Indeed, Marxism and other leftisms can onlyrnhe understood as post-Christian political philosophies ineoneeirnable in any other world. Communism is only the kingdonrrnof God with God left out.rnOn this subject of Christian charity—welfare, if you like—rnthere arc two fundamental errors—heresies we might callrnthem—that must be eliminated before we can take up the specificrndetails of any so-called welfare policy, whether it is foodstampsrnor national health care.rnThe hrst heresy is individualism, the doctrine that the objectrnof human life is the happiness or self-interest that an individualrnpursues on his own and for himself. This is the heresy ofrnCain, the hrst man who a.sked “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Ofrncourse he was. Men are not beasts—or worse than most beasts,rnlike rogue elephants or feral dogs that look out only for themselves.rnWe all have responsibilities to our children, our parents,rnour kinfolk and friends—een to neighbors we mav not particularlyrnlike. Every family is, to some extent, a communist collective,rnand every small town, as Garrison Keillor once said, operatesrnon a principle of infornral socialism.rnrhe greatest of English reactionaries, Samuel Johnson, saidrnthat the true test of a civilization was its treatment of thernpoor. This is often tjuoted to show that even a high lory wasrnin favor of the welfare state, but Johnson said civilization, notrngovernment, and he did not make the mistake of assuming thatrna social obligation is a government obligation. For that is thernother heresv of charitv, the collcctivist assumption that menrnlive for the common good. This is the heresy of Satan, whorntook our I ,ord up into a high place to offer Him all the kingdomsrnof the earth. For any merely good man, what strongerrntemptation can there be than the opportunity to do good to thernentire world? But if we are put upon the earth to be the keeperrnof our actual brother, that docs not mean that we have thernright or dut to look after a stranger or his brother.rnAmericans today arc afflicted with a virulent form of the diseasernChades Dickens described as telescopic philanthropy: werncare more for strangers than for neighbors and send our youngrnmen to die in a Somalian civil war that no one understands.rnWe refuse to pav the support of the sick and disabled membersrnof our famih, preferring in many cases to put our enfeebled parentsrnor retarded children into facilities paid for with other people’srnmoney, and yet we are proposing to lavish our money anrnnational health care for total strangers.rnThis diabolical heresy crept into philosophy by way of thernEnlightenment. Voltaire stirred up sympathy for the victims ofrnthe Lisbon carthcjuake, and his nemesis Rousseau was all tearsrnand pitv for anyone he did not know. It was onl his family andrnfriends he mistreated. But the great Satan of modern philosophyrnwas Immanuel Kant who thought that human beingsrnwere bound by some general and abstract duty that could notrnbe limited or compromised bv all our little duties to those wernlove and are responsible for. In Kant’s opinion, wc are not actingrnmorally when wc do a charitable act simply- because wernenjoy doing charitable acts. Morality enters the picture onlyrnwhen we are acting on a motive of universal duty.rnThe reductio ad absurdum of the Kantian idiocy are thoserncontemporary philosophers who, like John Rawls, Bruce Ackerman,rnand Thomas Nagel, treat a nation—or all humanity—rnas a great social experiment in which each of the members owesrnthe same things to all the others and it is not legitimate to makernexceptions for such accidents as family connections, personalrnfriendship, or national citizenship. Here, in a nutshell, is thernphilosophy of what \;ilter Williams calls the Bush-Clintonrnadministration. We go abroad seeking monsters to slay andrnbeggars to comfort as if the national motto were not “In GodrnWe Trust” but the old commercial jingle “I’d like to buy thernworld a Coke and keep it company.”rnIhave said there were two heresies, but in fact they are onernand the same: a refusal to see man as he is. Ultimately, individualismrnalways fails, because it is built upon nothing real inrnhuman nature, and when it does fail, the individualist leapsrnimmediately into some form of collectivism. The J.S. Mill whornbegan life as an individualist wound up saying that universalrnlove to all mankind would sweep the world, provoking thisrnfamous outburst from James Fitzjames Stephen: “Humanity isrnonly / writ large, and love for humanity generally means zeal forrnmy notions as to what men should be and how thev should live.rnI le that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen is peculiarlyrnapt to suppose that he loves his distant cousin whom he hathrnnot seen and never will.”rnIn the past, the welfare of human beings was the exclusivernconcern of themselves and their families and kindreds, and thernfamily was a semisovereign state responsible for the health, education,rnand welfare of its own members. The Jewish andrnChristian Scriptures command us to look after ourselves andrnour dependents and to practice charity. As Augustine put it,rncharity is the “virtue whieh joins us to God in love,” and it is,rnas St. Paul tells us, a greater gift of the spirit even than faith.rnBut charity under the duress of taxation is not charity at all,rneven if it is voted for on the democratic but un-Christian principlernof one man, one vote. One of the worst effects of nationalrnwelfare systems is that they diminish our capacity and our desirernto do voluntary works of charity. Until modern times, thernrulers of Europe provided relief to the poor only in times ofrngreat necessity or to the widows and orphans of veteran soldiers.rnThe Roman emperors, it is true, distributed grain and breadrnwithin the capital, but this was a sure indication that the populationrnof Rome was a degenerate mob that looked up to thernemperor as its ultimate patron. Even so, the imperial largessernwas a miniscule contribution to the welfare of the Empire’srnpopulation, and state philanthropy in the ancient wodd wasrngenerally limited to bare necessities—grain, oil, money.rnIn Christian Europe, it might be supposed, rulers would berntempted to exercise charity toward their peoples, and in easesrnof emergency, a prince might open his granaries to his subjectsrn—as did the Egyptian pharaoh who followed the advice ofrnJoseph. The Christian Gospel commands those of us whornaccept it to do good, as we arc able, to widows, orphans, andrnthe destitute, and throughout Christian England—beforernJUNE 1994/11rnrnrn