Fox's basic thesis here, since she trotted out the Leviticus BS, has been that individuals should care for the poor and not the government.
In her post #3644120:
Fox wrote:In the posted essay, Medved is pointing out that there is nothing in the Old or New Testament that suggests that it is the role of government to minister to the poor but rather, for very good reasons, that it is the duty of the individual. It is the duty of government to dispense unbiased justice which is not possible if the government assumes responsibility to dispense charity.
She took an opportunity to sideswipe atheists by asking how much atheist organizations give to the poor. That's a red herring, though. Leaving aside the undeniable fact that all atheists constitute a tiny fraction of the number of all people reporting a religious affiliation, the real question should be what exactly religious people contribute to charity, and whether or not it could reasonably be expected to deal with poverty. All of the atheists in the country could contribute every penny of their disposable income, to the point of crippling their personal domestic economies, and it would be a drop in the bucket. But the religious are certainly not going to fill the bucket, either.
In 1996, a Democratic President and a Republican Congress passed the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. Since that bill passed, until two years ago, welfare rolls dropped by 60% and family income in families earning 125% of the poverty line or less increased by 35%. But it still ain't chicken feed. The total cost of Medicaid in the 1997 Federal budget was estimated in excess of $105,000,000,000 (that's 105 billion dollars for those who don't do the zeroes). Housing assistance was estimated in excess of $25,000,000,000. Food and nutrition assistance was estimated in excess of $37,000,000,000. Total Public Assistance programs was estimated in excess of $68,000,000,000. For anyone who finds math difficult, that's well in excess of $200,000,000,000 (two hundred billion dollars). The source for this is the Government Printing Office, Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1997, pages 171-192 (which covers historical data from 1940 through the projections for Fiscal Year 2002). Let's hope this link works, but if not, it can be found by the same path i used via the Government Printing Office.
Source at the Government Printing Office, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President of the United States. (That is a search result page, so it might not work for you. I'll test it after i make this post. If you do get to that page, look at the fourth result, "OUTLAYS FOR PAYMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS BY CATEGORY AND MAJOR PROGRAM: 1940-2002," which you can view as a text document or a PDF document.)
So, that's in excess of $200 billion dollars in Federal direct payments and block grants (both categories are included in the totals given) for FY1997. This is interesting because, according to an article from
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology published in July, 2004, Americans claimed
almost $100 billion in charitable donations in 1997. (
Source, page six of the article, which contains the tables at the end of the article.) That's considerably less than half, and the article i have cited and linked here is concerned with a distinction between religious charitable contributions and non-religious charitable contributions. Now, even if assuming for the sake of argument, as much as 90% of that charitable giving were by religious people, and leaving aside the fact that you can donate to the church building fund and claim it as a charitable contribution, that wouldn't add up to even half of the amount spent by the Federal government on "welfare" programs in Fiscal Year 1997. It would not cover one red cent of the money spent by county and municipal governments, who are not the direct recipients of Federal block grants, unless the states in which they are located are feeling generous. When i worked in the "charity industry" in Columbus, Ohio, in the late 1980s, a recipient of public assistance would get money from AFDC which represented Federal and state money, including food stamps, WIC, etc.; they were also eligible for assistance from Franklin County and the city of Columbus; they were also eligible for direct grants in aid from the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, which would pay almost their entire rent bill, except for about $80 per month.
Yet Fox would have you believe that the loving, giving Christians of this country could take up the slack of the well over $100 billion difference between the outlay of the Federal government and the total charitable contributions claimed by taxpayers, as well as making up state expenditures which don't come from Federal block grants, and the expenditures of county and municipal governments. At this point, i will point out that religious charitable contributions doesn't even come close to 90% of that less than $100 billion, and in fact, the article cited and linked lists religious charitable contributions for 1997 as being just over $465 million out of a total of just under $750 million of charitable contributions claimed. Even if you ignore that people can donate to the church building fund (which doesn't feed, house or clothe a single poor child) and claim a charitable contribution, those figures show that in 1997, religious charitable contributions amounted to about 20% of the amount expended by the Federal government on "welfare" payments in all categories. Once again, this doesn't include state payments which did not come from Federal block grants, and does not include payments by counties and municipalities.
In short, the claim by Fox that individuals should take care of the poor and not the goverment is tantamount to a 21st century cry of "Qu'ils mangent de la croute." (For the linguistically and historically challenged, that is usually translated--badly--as "Let them eat cake.") There is no way in Hell, or Heaven, for that matter, that we could rely upon frigid Christian charity to take care of the poor in this country, and i rather suspect that Fox and her ilk would be content to see them starve and wander homeless and naked--so long, of course, as don't wander into her neighborhood.