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The giving of charity, which brings sustenance to a needy individual, is a life-sustaining act – one that effectively allows us to imitate G-d, ‘the animator of the living,’ and provides each person with the noblest direction in life – to ‘walk in His ways.’

-The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Things were quite a bit different when I was a kid growing up in the 1970′s. For one, I was raised Baptist. That’s not completely relevant, but for those who were wondering how a Jew could have the last name of Jones, there you have it. As a kid, I saw a lot, heard a lot, and the general lines of society were very different than they are now.

My maternal grandfather, John Bowen (whose name I possess) retired from General Motors, here in Atlanta. But I remember in the middle of all of the scabby knees one singular event that would change much of the conditioning I had during my formative years.

For some reason or another, one summer day I was dropped off to spend the day with my grandparents. My grandfather was hauling cardboard boxes to his blue Caprice, and I was handed a gallon jug of tea to haul to the car. For those unfamiliar with fine Southern living, back in those days my grandmother (like almost everyone I knew) always made sweet iced tea in huge glass gallon jugs, the industrial size that you would use for mustard or mayonnaise. I’m not certain where she got them from, my uncle, I imagine, but she always had a supply of them.

There was an overflowing plate of fried chicken, green beans, and a plate of her biscuits. A watermelon from my grandfather’s garden was in the back floorboard for good measure. I thought we were going to have ourselves the best picnic ever.

I just couldn’t figure out why we were having a picnic.

My grandfather shooed me into the car, and we set off. A few minutes later, we were across town, on the “other side of the railroad tracks.” I was confused.

In the ’70s, especially in rural Georgia, blacks and whites didn’t live in the same area. Ever. It was just the way things were, and nobody really griped about it. For those who haven’t guessed, the other side of the tracks was a demarcation line of sorts. He pulled up to a clapboard house and parked, telling me to stay in the car.

A few children congregated around the stairs, one of them about my age, and they stared at me as if I were a circus freak show act come to town. I heard him talking at the door to a woman who kept grabbing his hand and sporadically crying. The “picnic” went from the car into the house. Off went the chicken, and the biscuits, and the watermelon from the very vine I had already been busted twice trying to crack open with my cousin.

Not only could I simply observe in disbelief what was happening before my very eyes, I couldn’t comprehend it, either. He was giving food away that we reserved for our best occasions!

He finished his conversation with a big smile and a wave to someone inside the house, and said a phrase I would hear over and over in my lifetime, “If you need anything, you call me, y’hear?” One thing you need to understand about old rural redneck Southerners of any race- when you hear that phrase, we aren’t being polite. We mean it.

My grandfather got back in the car, we backed out of the gravel driveway, and headed back towards his house. I finally gathered up the gall to ask, “Who are they? Why did we take them all that food?” I will never forget his response, like a movie clip. He slowed the car, looked at me as if I had grown another head, and said, “Good lord, child, somebody’s got to feed that man!”

It turned out that the man inside had gotten injured on the assembly line at GM and was out of work. Workman’s Compensation wasn’t exactly the big animal it is today. There was no money coming in, and that was a bad thing. He was not going to go “on the dole.” This was a matter of respect, personal pride, and dignity. All things my grandpa knew about and understood.

He was himself a veteran of World War II, serving with the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division), and was a German POW. He considered this man a friend, and as there is honor among thieves, there is greater honor among good, respectable men.

I bring this story up because we have, as a society, been indoctrinated and deceived into accepting the idea of the “welfare state.” Because we assume the government will “handle it” and use the excuse “but I pay my taxes,” common decency has been lost.

It was in this same vein I was raised never to take any kind of government handout unless it was utterly and irrevocably necessary. I have received unemployment benefits, which I paid into. But I have never received food stamps or welfare, even when I needed them, and my family were chiding me for the said decision, and begging me to sign up under the idea that it was my “right”. I had wondered at one point why I was conditioned to this point of view.

But government welfare was intended never to be created. Thomas Jefferson said in his 1801 Inaugural Address the following:

A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.

Cap and Trade? Subsidies? Corporate and personal welfare? Government intrusion into free trade and the business world? Not under Jefferson. In fact, he would write this in a letter to Joseph Milligan 15 years later:

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Charity is not the same thing as welfare. In many cases, it is more effective. The Jewish sage Maimonides once wrote, “There are eight rungs in charity. The highest is when you help a man to help himself.” With that said, our welfare institutions are doing no favors. It’s hard to regain the things you lose, and difficult to help oneself when your children are crying from hunger. For roughly 49 million Americans, of which an estimated 16.7 million are children, this is the reality.

Before you scoff, that number was from 2008. In 2007, the number was 36.2 million. A 13 million person jump, if you are doing the math.

Recently, Bill Gates asked other benefactors to sink large amounts of money into charity. Why would that be? Besides the fact that charity is a tax writeoff, and the minor fact that charity gets more done on whole than governmental control ever will? Consider that Venezuela, a country that touts the very system Progressives (and Party-Line Republicans) are  leading us to, is having food riots and governmental thieving of groceries.

I fed my nine month old son dinner tonight. He has a little spoon, and I have the little containers. I look in his eyes as he smiles and opens his mouth like a little baby bird, and I thank G-d with every breath on 3 things:

1. G-d gave me this beautiful child to raise to be better than me
2. G-d gave me the means to feed him, and he does not have to cry hungry
3. G-d has given enough for me to sneak something for those who need food for their little ones

In my morning prayers, there is a piece I’d like to share that sums this up:

“…Provide me with my allotment of bread, and bring forth for me and all the members of my household, my food before I have need for it; in contentment but not in pain, in a permissible but not a forbidden manner, in honor but not in disgrace, for life and for peace… Make me not needful for people’s largesse; and may there be fulfilled in me the verse that states, ‘You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing’ and that states, ‘Cast your burden upon Hashem and He will support you…”

We are the American Dream. We, the people. You and I. It’s not about getting a white picket fence. To hell with the fence! It’s about us, as people, having true liberty, a true market economy, and being able to help those to our left and our right, like warriors of Sparta. Not because we have to, or are mandated to, or regulated to, but simply because we are good American people. As it has been said, “Good deeds are done by good people.”

This wasteful system that swells our politicians and destroys the good fortunes of America will have to be dismantled. A Fair Tax will require it. Those of us in the Tea Party, and those constantly joining our ranks for a return to the vision of the Founding Fathers must know that this is not a simple predicament. We must prepare for it.

We must ignore the white noise and remember that the idea of “paying it forward” is not a Progressive ideology, nor is it new. They may claim it, but I assure you, they have never at any time owned it. The idea is literally as old as Moses.

We have to regain our honor and decency. But more than that, we need to re-learn how to take care of each other and “promote the general welfare.”

It’s not a system, folks. It was never meant to be a system. It’s an attitude and the fruit of a true free market economy, an animal I dare say we haven’t seen in this country since the 1800′s. It’s a way of life, a standard of personal conduct, and no government, church, or rag-tag lot of well wishers can give it or take it away.

It is all up to you.

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