The role of giving to the poor does not belong to the government, but rather to the church and people that make up the society. God calls us to give to the poor, exemplified in Leviticus 19: 9-10, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.” When Jesus came, he did not reconstruct the Roman government so that everyone was forced to give a large portion of their earnings to the poor. Rather, his intentions were to change people’s hearts so that they desired to generously give to others. Bastiat believes the purpose of the law is to stop the fatal tendency to plunder instead of work. Therefore, using it to redistribute income perverts its purpose. As a result, philanthropic government is not true charity. As many conservatives favor less centralized power, local voluntary communities are much more effective than involuntary collectivism. Making income assistance programs through the federal government causes less efficiency due to less specialization and a greater amount of people taking advantage of offered services. It is much easier to take advantage of others when you do not come into …show more content…
As early as the fall of man, humans are notorious for their desire to be like God. Satan offered Eve the forbidden fruit with the promise that she would be as knowledgeable and as powerful as God. Keeping this in mind, it is mankind’s inherent nature to take advantage of power. As mentioned before, Bastiat’s purpose of law is to stop the fatal tendency of people to plunder rather than work. Man’s fallen nature can only give way to perverted government systems due to lawmakers that seek to benefit themselves. Power must be distributed to local levels and checks must be placed on high ranked government positions to reduce the influence of a single person or people group’s plunder from the law. Having a higher power making all of the decisions suggests that he alone has better judgement than all others. Since natural tendencies of man are so inherently bad, how can the organizers always have pure intentions? This unrealistic expectation is very prevalent in Karl Marx’s communism. Rather than resulting in utopia’s, they always generate totalitarian governments. There has not been a single communist government in history where this did not happen. Power must always be given into the hands of many people and distributed to local needs. There is no way that the federal government can accommodate to all variations of issues that