I agree. In most American communities the most charitable and community minded people are church members. Arthur Brooks, a scholar at Syracuse, has written in Who Really Cares that church members give much more of their time and money to charitable causes than secular people who tend to rely more on governmental programs.

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The federal gov’t does not create this sense of community either. Its role in creating community is to mitigate the harmful effects of capitalism thus giving citizens a sense of worth. Its the citizens who create the community through public schools, sports programmes, churches, service clubs and even the local pub.

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One resourse that cannot easily offer a strong sense of community is the federal government. It can take money from us as individuals and from our community organizations and businesses, and it can force its will on us and our communities, but it cannot create a strong sense of community nearly as well as a local church can or other private sector institutions.

If the federal gov’t did not have healthy communities, businesses and income producers to live off of, it would have nothing to offer any of us at all.

Government can protect a community and reflect its values, but we are responsible for creating healthy communities and living in them responsibly.

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19th C England was the closest society has come to a completely free economy. I dare say you and Mr. Dickens may have a disagreement about subservience.

Is Cuba better under Batista or Castro??

As for the rest of your post, my violin is gently weeping for the hardworking capitalist.

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Where did you read that? I heard that a two parent home has a higher success rate, and that includes homes with two mommies and no daddies at all. You guys place too much emphasis on sex and not enough on the power of nurturing adults.

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The truth is that being a player in a free economy is a rough game requires a combination of the classic virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice.

Meanwhile, the harpies on the sidelines, many of whom have never put in an eighteen hour day during which little goes right, wring their hands, read the daily papers, and bayonet the wounded.

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safeguarding the prerequisites of a free economy, which presumes a certain equality between the parties, such that one party would not be so powerful as practically to reduce the other to subservience.

hence, JP II does admit the necessity of state intervention to ensure at the very least equity of opportunity and the social-welfare of its inhabitants. Not too much different from what I advocate we just begin with a different starting point.

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