Just a comment from someone partially over there on The Dark Side.
I'm a fiscal conservative / social liberal. I know that many social services are now delivered by various governments because well-intentioned people want to see the beneficiaries receive those social services. I do, too. But I also observe a staggering amount of waste, inefficiency, political patronage, and corruption involved when the government here delivers social services. I'd like to see those services delivered by nonprofits.
Why? Because I can look at their tax returns (every nonprofit with more than $25,000 in income must file a Form 990 with our Internal Revenue Service -- and the 990s are online at http://www.guidestar.org/). If the delivery-to-donation ratio falls below acceptable limits, I can pull my funding -- deciding, perhaps, that Lutheran World Relief operates more effectively than The American Friends Service Committee (to pick some examples at random) and sending my social service dollars where I can be reasonably sure that the highest percentage will get to the hands of folks I actually want to help, instead of [Kofi Annan's son][Halliburton][pick your favorite corruption target and insert here]. I sure wish I could pull the xx% of my tax dollars that go to social services and bestow them where they'll be used more efficiently.
Now, if I (or someone like me) articulates this viewpoint, we're quickly branded unenlightened anti-social-services types, and much of our mainstream media will talk about us -- condescendingly -- as marginally tolerable subhumans who have somehow learned how to bathe, wear shoes, and not make messes in the house, and as uncaring folks who want to see their fellow Americans, especially children and the elderly, continue to struggle in poverty, disease, and ignorance. If we support school vouchers, we're somehow anti-education. If we think Social Security needs to be reformed, we're anti-elderly. Ditto if we sugest that the law of the land should be made by the legislature and not an activist judiciary responding to some sort of self-directed higher morality.
[hyperbole alert]That's also how the mainstream media has been talking about the religious right for years -- when it isn't labeling them as slavering, fanged, violent folks who should be locked up in the interest of public safety. A certain amount of what's happening here is a group of folks who are more laissez-faire than you might realize taking a long-overdue swipe back at the smarty-pants commentators who've been mocking them for years.[/hyperbole]
Seriously now, a lot of what's happening here at least is a desire on the part of a large number of middle-of-the-road people to make sure we don't go haring off one way or another without fully considering the implications of where we're going.
[Given the subject matter, I'm fairly confident Robert Heinlein wouldn't mind my borrowing his "marginally tolerable subhuman" line, as long as I give proper credit...]
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A view from the "right"...
Date: 2005-08-23 07:20 am (UTC)I'm a fiscal conservative / social liberal. I know that many social services are now delivered by various governments because well-intentioned people want to see the beneficiaries receive those social services. I do, too. But I also observe a staggering amount of waste, inefficiency, political patronage, and corruption involved when the government here delivers social services. I'd like to see those services delivered by nonprofits.
Why? Because I can look at their tax returns (every nonprofit with more than $25,000 in income must file a Form 990 with our Internal Revenue Service -- and the 990s are online at http://www.guidestar.org/). If the delivery-to-donation ratio falls below acceptable limits, I can pull my funding -- deciding, perhaps, that Lutheran World Relief operates more effectively than The American Friends Service Committee (to pick some examples at random) and sending my social service dollars where I can be reasonably sure that the highest percentage will get to the hands of folks I actually want to help, instead of [Kofi Annan's son][Halliburton][pick your favorite corruption target and insert here]. I sure wish I could pull the xx% of my tax dollars that go to social services and bestow them where they'll be used more efficiently.
Now, if I (or someone like me) articulates this viewpoint, we're quickly branded unenlightened anti-social-services types, and much of our mainstream media will talk about us -- condescendingly -- as marginally tolerable subhumans who have somehow learned how to bathe, wear shoes, and not make messes in the house, and as uncaring folks who want to see their fellow Americans, especially children and the elderly, continue to struggle in poverty, disease, and ignorance. If we support school vouchers, we're somehow anti-education. If we think Social Security needs to be reformed, we're anti-elderly. Ditto if we sugest that the law of the land should be made by the legislature and not an activist judiciary responding to some sort of self-directed higher morality.
[hyperbole alert]That's also how the mainstream media has been talking about the religious right for years -- when it isn't labeling them as slavering, fanged, violent folks who should be locked up in the interest of public safety. A certain amount of what's happening here is a group of folks who are more laissez-faire than you might realize taking a long-overdue swipe back at the smarty-pants commentators who've been mocking them for years.[/hyperbole]
Seriously now, a lot of what's happening here at least is a desire on the part of a large number of middle-of-the-road people to make sure we don't go haring off one way or another without fully considering the implications of where we're going.
[Given the subject matter, I'm fairly confident Robert Heinlein wouldn't mind my borrowing his "marginally tolerable subhuman" line, as long as I give proper credit...]