The Generous Republic, A Critical Portrait

“ And we give thanks to everyone who’s doing their part to make the United States a better, more compassionate nation – who spend their Thanksgiving volunteering at a soup kitchen, or joining a service project, or bringing food and cheer to a lonely neighbor. That big-hearted generosity is a central part of our American character. We believe in lending a hand to folks who need it. We believe in pitching in to solve problems even if they aren’t our problems. ”

“ Throughout the world, the people of the United States are known for their tradition of generosity and voluntary service to others. The strength of this tradition, which has been revitalized in the 1980s, lies in a key insight: The wellbeing of each and every individual in our society is a matter not only of public interest, but of personal responsibility as well. No form of charitable endeavor can truly succeed if it is not grounded in the recognition that the benefits it confers are as important to the giver as they are to the recipient. ”

“ That the voluntary charity of Americans would count by millions yearly, would flow out in a steady, deep, increasing tide, that giving would be the rule, free, glad giving, and refusing the marked exception, the world would not have believed it, we would not have believed it ourselves. Is this nothing?
We will think more of each other also for all this. We will love and honor each other better. Under the awful pressure of the Hand that lies upon us so heavily, we are brought into closer knowledge and closer sympathy. The blows of battle are welding us into one. ”

“ We are grateful to the countless Americans who serve their communities in soup kitchens and shelters, looking out for those who are less fortunate, and lifting up those who have fallen on hard times. This generosity, this compassion, this belief that we are each other's keepers, is essential to who we are, not just on this day, but every day. ”

“ As we work to defeat the pandemic, strengthen our economy, address racial inequity, and tackle the climate crisis, we need more Americans to get involved. Government cannot do the job alone, but government—working together with nonprofits and community organizations, the private sector, and the American people—can make our country stronger, more prosperous, and ready for the future.
When more Americans step forward to serve, it renews our sense of community and strengthens our democracy. Acts of service unite people from different backgrounds and allow us to truly see and hear one another. ”

“ Americans have volunteered in record numbers. Charitable donations are higher than ever. Faith-based groups are bringing hope to pockets of despair, with newfound support from the federal government. And to help guarantee equal treatment of faith-based organizations when they compete for federal funds, I ask you to permanently extend Charitable Choice. ”

“ Consideration for others is the milk of human kindness. For what we do for others our recompense is in the act itself ... we should claim no other reward. Observation brings to view that they who give in real charity cloak their acts from the eyes of all save the recipient. ”

“ I have not thought it night, when I felt your hand or heard you breathe.” Oh! what liberal charities are there of which the world knows nothing! How generous, and how mighty in extent and value, are the gifts given by the poor to the poor! ”

“ There is a disposition to-day to question this wholesale praise of giving and to suggest that it is not free from danger. Instead of promoting public welfare, generosity may sometimes impoverish the community. It may lead people to depend on others, instead of standing on their own feet. And what a general weakening follows! The two classes into which society always tends to fall become more sharply contrasted—the rich, amusing themselves from time to time with39 officious charity, and the poor through accepting it steadily growing more helpless and cringing. ”

“ True benevolence does not consist in giving money. Nor can charitable donations, given indiscriminately to the poor, have any other effect than to sap the foundations of self-respect, and break down the very outworks of virtue itself. There are many forms of benevolence which create the very evils they are intended to cure, and encourage the poorer classes in the habit of dependence upon the charity of others,—to the neglect of those far healthier means of social well-being which lie within their own reach. ”

“ These people have almost lost their energy of character, and all power of industry (except in pursuing the different charities and patronesses) , through this long and indiscriminate assistance. They are paupers, not in Poor-houses, and dependents on alms, living at home. They are often worse off than if they had never been helped.
This trade of alms and dependence on charities ought to be checked. It demoralizes the poor, and weakens public confidence in wise and good charities. It tends to keep the rich from all benefactions, and makes many doubt whether charity ever really benefits. ”

“ The computation is, that every sixteenth person, or one person in every three households, is a pauper, hanging like a dead weight on the industry of the other fifteen. This, too, is only one form of charity, beside untold millions spent in endowed alms-houses, hospitals, asylums for every imaginable infirmity, coal-funds, clothing-funds, charity-schools, voluntary labor-rates, church-collections, alms done in secret, and several hundred other species of benevolence.'
Vainly does an American strive to realize such a state of society. ”

“ It must aid the poor and unfortunate by giving them a chance to help themselves. Giving to charities is esteemed generous; it is a truer generosity for the keen man of affairs not to ruinously undersell his less acute neighbor and thus perhaps force him to depend on charity. ”

“ Such "social work" creates a strained relation--the recipient of bounty feels that he has been belittled in the taking, and it is a question whether the giver should not also feel that he has been belittled in the giving. Charity never led to a settled state of affairs. The charitable system that does not aim to make itself unnecessary is not performing service. ”

“ Is it possible that the message will reach those who vote for the benefits, but not those who receive them? How different it is with private charity where both the giver and the receiver understand that charity is the product of the humanitarian impulses of the giver, not the due of the receiver. ”

“ The second precaution is to exercise our benevolence according to our means. Those who wish to be more benevolent than they can afford, are in the first place unjust to their family; since the property, to the inheritance of which it has a right, goes thus over to strangers. Such generosity often leads, moreover, to the enriching of one’s self at the expense of others, in order to provide for liberalities. One sees, thus, many people, more vain than generous, pass for being benevolent. It becomes then a borrowed virtue, which has more of vanity than liberality. ”

“ And, by the way, those occasional responses, significant neither of morality nor of intelligence, lead political theorists far astray. As if honor or honesty could win other than sporadic and more or less hypocritical homage—practical homage, I mean—among a people whose permanent ideal is wealth, no matter how got or how used. That is another way of saying that the chief characteristic of Americans is that we are human and, whatever we may profess, cherish the human ideal universal in a world where want is man's wickedest enemy and wealth his most winning friend. ”

“ It is true that the benevolence and humanity, unquestionably characteristic of American nature, are partly virtues of prosperity—qualities not of character but of circumstance. The same people who are so charitable to those in need, and so unwilling to inflict cruel punishments on the guilty, are often criminally reckless of human life in the pursuit of gain. ”

“ Look at America—I'm half an American myself, sir, so I've a right to say it—where a man may become a millionaire by crushing out everybody else and appropriating the gifts of nature which God meant for humanity! But America is a Christian country, too, and its richest men build, of their abundance, churches in which to glorify the giving of the widow's mite! Is the man to be silenced who warns the world that such sordid and squalid materialism is swallowing up religion, morality, and truth? ”

“ It leads men to mutilate their own natures from a mistaken theory of what constitutes success, and to give admiration to enterprises which add nothing to human welfare. It promotes a dead uniformity of character and purpose, a diminution in the joy of life, and a stress and strain which leaves whole communities weary, discouraged, and disillusioned.
America, the pioneer of Western progress, is thought by many to display the worship of money in its most perfect form. ”

“ But all in all, the philanthropists' support of education was an investment in the optimal functioning of a society whose scale necessitated levels high enough for efficient work. Education was connected to philanthropy, and it still is, as a form of wealth distribution. But it is not love for the neighbor that makes philanthropists' support of education necessary, rather the sheer advantage resulting from money given, estate or machines donated, chairs endowed. ”

“ In other words, the world might need even less of its new charity, if it had a little more of the old humility. When we complain of American individualism, we forget that we have fostered it by ourselves having far less of this impersonal ideal of the Republic or commonwealth as a whole. ”

“ We may call the story ‘How the Filibusterer Sailed.’”
CHAPTER XXV.—HOW THE FILIBUSTERER SAILED. It will come to you as strange, my friends, to hear objection—as though against an ill trait—to that open-handed generosity which is held by many to be among the marks of supreme virtue. Generosity, whether it be evidenced by gifts of money, of sympathy, of effort or of time, is only another word for weakness. If one were to go into careful consideration of the life-failure of any man, it would be found most often that his fortunes were slain by his generosity ”

“ Giving fails to reach the altruism it seeks because its generosity is confined to one of the two parties engaged, while to the other is assigned the inferior position of egoistic receiver. But is this necessary? May we not conceive of a gift without this blemish,77 a giving in which each side gives to the other, thus joining giving and getting, and abolishing all inferiority? ”

“ It indeed generally happens that the giver and receiver differ in their opinions of generosity; the same partiality to his own interest inclines one to large expectations, and the other to sparing distributions. Perhaps the infirmity of human nature will scarcely suffer a man groaning under the pressure of distress, to judge rightly of the kindness of his friends, or think they have done enough till his deliverance is completed ”

“ It has long been a, common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly urging her family toward self-support, to suggest, or at least connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and more social claim ; to urge that the boy go to work and support his parents, who are receiving charitable aid. The visitor does not realize what a cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives advice. ”

“ Since no impulse of the human mind can be approved of, even though it springs from a right feeling, unless it be made into a virtue by discretion, I forbid generosity to degenerate into extravagance. It is, indeed, pleasant to receive a benefit with open arms, when reason bestows it upon the worthy, not when it is flung hither or thither thoughtlessly and at random ”

“ Philanthropy?—This is a great word, "the love of man." And yet the philanthropist is too often content with the general patronage of good works, the elaboration of schemes, the management of committees, to do much personal work for the amelioration of the world. ”