Micah Tillman

[pt. 1 is here]

From the Compassion Forum, last Sunday, at a college in a small town in Pennsylvania:

CLINTON: So maybe . . . this impoverishment of body and soul is what we are expected to be spending our time responding to, and so few of us do.

Even those who are doing wonderful work with organizations represented in this audience, we are just not doing enough. And it’s a personal call; it’s a family community, religious call; and it’s a governmental call. And we’ve got to do more to respond to that call.

I’ll leave it to you to see how the Clintons are responding to the call. You can start here.

And while you’re at it, you can start thinking about the Obamas too.

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Here’s the issue: After thanking relief organizations, Clinton identifies the job of helping ease suffering as personal, familial, communitarian, religious, and governmental.

Why governmental? What is it about government that would make it better to do something through government than through some other means (some other “organ”)?

And how does government come to have responsibilities? What is the mission of government? (Nobody thinks I have the responsibility to fix the space shuttles, or to take care of my uncle’s neighbor’s headache, or to be your loving wife. So what should we expect government to be doing, and why?)

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And what does she mean by “we’ve got to do more”? Does she mean we should give more to charity, or do more personal, familial, community, or religious work? Or does she mean we should pay more taxes?

(Of course, these are not mutually exclusive choices. But why any of them rather than others? While all of them rather than some?)

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And if she means we should be paying more taxes (if she thinks the government is a charity we should be funding more, so that we can tell ourselves “we” are doing more) then she’s suffering from the GMI Myth.

How long until the GMI Myth becomes the GIMOO/GMI Myth for her, if it hasn’t already?

Tags: Barack Obama, Charity, Compassion Forum, GIMOO/GMI Myth, GMI Myth, Hillary Clinton, Messiah College, Responsibility