“We” authorize the Congress that “we” elect to take any portion of “our” income it wants, as long as the percentage is set in a democratic (i.e., majority-vote) fashion. Once that portion or percentage is democratically set, the Internal Revenue Service is authorized to use force to collect the assigned take from everyone. The IRS then delivers the take to other government agencies, which then distribute the take to the poor and needy of the world. Voila! “We” are caring, compassionate, and good … well, as long as “our” government officials and agencies are caring, compassionate, and good. If they are “stingy,” then “we” are stingy.

That’s in fact the underlying collectivized “moral” basis for the entire welfare-warfare system that “we” brought into existence in the 20th century. That’s why “we” are good in Iraq –because the IRS delivered a portion of the take to the Pentagon, which then used the money to invade Iraq to bring “democracy and liberation” to the Iraqi people, all on the orders of the president, who is of course democratically elected by “us.” Voila! Through the collective, joint efforts of the IRS and the Pentagon (well, and the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve also) and the president, “we” are good people for what “we” are doing in Iraq. ~Jacob Hornberger, Lew Rockwell.com

Mr. Hornberger has hit upon the real reason why the charges of American “stinginess” in the wake of the devastating tsunami in south Asia are misguided. Few would deny that Christians, motivated by charity, should want to assist people in such dire and extraordinary need, but it is no way obvious that anyone should feel a sense of fulfilling a compulsory justice imposed by a modern, liberal theory of ethics. But that is the not the source of these criticisms–they derive from the collectivist and globalist assumptions that we are One World, where there is such a thing as an “international community,” and those with greater means are obligated by a stern social justice to provide assistance to other members of that “community.” Rather than appealing to charity, America specifically and the West more generally are accused in a way that suggests they are somehow failing to meet moral requirements.

As Dr. Thomas Fleming observed astutely in his recently-published work, The Morality of Everyday Life: “The claims of international philanthropy are, therefore, quite distinct from charity, which presupposes a volutary contribution and not a politically imposed transfer of wealth.” (p.72) That the expected relief for tsunami victims is an extraordinary occasion, and not a permanent expected requirement, does not change the fact that the globalists likely making such charges against the American government are motivated by this same conviction that wealthier nations should be compelled to “contribute” to the rest of the world. Again Dr. Fleming explains: “In the secularized vision of the human brotherhood, as it is represented by international agencies for relief and development, all the world’s resources should be shared by all the world’s peoples in a collaboration for the common good.” (p.74) He goes on to say that just as it has been a mistake to entrust activities properly reserved to the community or family to the national government, and the move from national to international is a natural consequence of the move towards collectivist solutions. This is what Mr. Hornberger has correctly identified as the collectivist impulse of the welfare-warfare state and the liberal democratic proclivity to speak in collective terms as an undifferentiated “we”.

(Hat tip to Lee Shelton at the PaleoBlog and Jon Luker at Polemics for bringing Mr. Hornberger’s article to a wider audience.)