(I'm a couple days back in the thread)
Pro-life..?
Yup, this has always been a problem with the "economic issues" conservative and "religious issues" conservative being in the same coalition. A basic ethics difference between the USA left and right is this: what kind of death is society responsible for? The left and the right both agree, if a foreign army comes and kills an American on our soil, that's a death that the government should have prevented if it could have. But, if an American gets sick and can't afford medicine, is that the government's business? If someone is homeless or starving, is that the government's business? Left says yes, right says no. Except that American Christians have a long history of charitable works focused on the local poor. If American history ended 100 years ago and I had to guess the rest, I would tell you that religious Americans would be pro welfare.
Maybe. But tax-funded charity is direct competition to church-funded charity. The latter is more obviously generous, and improves the reputation of the church. It's a very effective way to gain converts. Given a choice, I think most religious people would prefer the latter.
...So of course that's *allowed*, by letting people write charitable donations off their taxes. In effect, many people fund church outreach rather than government programs. And the tax code was written to allow that.
Whether that's a good thing or not, many people have gotten used to the idea. Government programs, absolutely swamped and underfunded, are seen as inefficient and dispassionate. I often hear that the answer is to empower churches to handle even more.
Basically religious Americans *are* pro-welfare, but in a missionary sense. That just worries me since it naturally prioritizes conversion over fixing the underlying problems.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4463506 times)