On this past Sunday’s television program, “The Georgia Gang” (aired by the Fox affiliate in Atlanta), a telling exchange took place during a discussion about the Georgia senate race between David Perdue and Michelle Nunn.  One of the guests noted that some pro-business democrats that he knew were supporting Mr. Perdue, to which Ms. Alexis Scott, vice president of member relations for the Center for Civil and Human Rights, replied that everyone is pro-business.  One of the panel members suggested that Ms. Scott is not really pro-business, and is in fact a socialist, and Ms. Scott replied that she would much prefer being characterized as a Christian.

Many on the left lay claim to the moral high ground in defending socialism and redistribution.  Beyond demonstrating that they’ve learned nothing from even recent history, they appear to believe that supporting programs through which government provides aid to those deemed to be in need is the equivalent of Christian charity.  There are literally mounds of evidence that government at any level, but particularly the federal government, is incapable of operating assistance programs efficiently.  All such programs are riddled with waste, fraud, and corruption.  More to the point, though, government involvement in such “charity” sullies the entire exchange and expunges any semblance of virtue.

Charity takes place when one gives to another voluntarily, out of the kindness of his or her heart.  Nothing like that takes place with government redistribution.  Instead, people who work hard and earn an income have a portion of their earnings taken from them, and that money (after multiple layers of bureaucracy have gotten their cut) is given to others.  There is no free will here – one complies, is fined or jailed, or has property taken away.  Somehow, all of this is lost on many leftists.  They apparently feel as if they’re more charitable, or more Christian, than others because they support giving other people’s money away!

Charity is impossible if the exchange is coerced.  The truth is that the income tax allows the federal government to have the first crack at your income – they take what they need to fund government and their myriad assistance programs, and you’re left with whatever they decide you should have.  There is no historical record of Jesus ever taking money by force and giving it to the needy.  That would be much more accurately characterized as theft, and, though I may not be as Christian as Ms. Scott and other redistributionists on the left, I seem to remember something in the Bible that counsels against that.