Bill Whittle on Charity

I'm always impressed by people who admit to their own foolishness in the kind of gory detail Bill Whittle does here. You can argue that it's self-serving, since he's talking how he recovered from his youthful foolishness, but he doesn't really talk about how wonderful he is. He just stops being a jackass (at least in this regard).

But there's an underlying truth: Charity is the quickest way to get someone to hate you. Nobody hates the gol-durned government like people on welfare. If you ever helped someone a lot and then had them turn on you, you know what I'm talking about. (Or if you've ever been that person.)

No good deed goes unpunished, as they say.

Whether it's because private charities have understood that in some fashion, or because they simply can't afford to give out endless streams of cash, it's been traditional for charities to require something back from those they help.

Parents run into this, too: Because kids want to help before they're capable, the parents get used to refusing that help, and by the time they're teens, the kids are so pissed they wouldn't help put the house out if it's on fire.

Not that this is going to change anything. But it would be nice to reverse this persistent equation that if you don't want to pour endless money into a problem, you don't care about that problem