Begging Entitlement

Read a post over on Lawdog today regarding the entitlement attitude. Loved the comments too. But I thought that I would throw my 2 cents in on my own blog.

Austin is rife with the street-corner "Please help me" beggars. Today I saw one of the guys that I've seen off and on for the past several years. He had three signs. The first said, "Road Rage? Yell at me for 50 cents". The second said, "My wife has a pistol, so I've got to bring home the bacon". The third said, "Why live in a $200,000 house when you can live under a $20,000,000 bridge."

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Since I was just rolling, I gave the guy $.50 just for the entertainment he gave me. But what is more, I told him that I loved the humor. He smiled sort of shyly and then winked.

But just like LawDog, I have run into the guy who asks for money and then gets digusted when you either give him your doggie bag or ask him to eat with you at a local restaurant. This has happened when I've had the kittens with me and it is very difficult to explain to them why the beggar acted that way. But I think it is beginning to sink in that not all beggars are telling the truth.

One of the comments that LawDog made was:

We have an entire generation, hell, an entire culture, that expects -- demands -- that those who have must give to those who don't have, and that this is the Right and Correct Way Of Things. That this is not, in any way, to be thought of as charity, lest the ego of the beggar suffer damage.

Charity is not the problem, as we are told to be charitable to others in the Bible. The problem is that when government got involved in charity and local citizens gave up their role in charity, there was no longer a way to "require" that those receiving the charity do anything for it. Local citizens providing encouragement and help getting people back on their feet are a bazillion times more effective than welfare, because the local citizens can express compassion and care as they fill a bowl in a soup kitchen. They can "encourage" a person to get off their duff and help out another local citizen before lunch is served. This is how the precious "self-image" of a beggar should be preserved. Government programs, in trying to protect this self-image actually destroy any incentive to accomplish anything for themselves.

Beggars beg because it is much easier to beg than to work. It is also easier to get welfare than it is to work. There really is something wrong with these two realities.

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