Word: help
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Such is the perverse world of Harvard extracurriculars. Organizations you might think would want all the help they can get still put their members through layer after layer of selection. I cannot count the number of rounds of interviews and applications I've gone through since that September. First-years beware, it will happen to you; stick around long enough, and you might even get to interview someone who once interviewed...
...gave the term meaning early this summer when he proposed a massive effort to support "faith-based institutions" as providers of social services. Bush announced that he would dedicate $8 billion of Federal money to these groups, saying that "in every instance when my Administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives...
Moreover, packing off those in need of social services to religious groups for help implies that they need spiritual counseling as well as financial assistance. Even if true, it is an insulting assumption--that the poor, disabled, or unemployed are spiritually impoverished as well, and that the best way to remedy social ills is to expose them as a captive audience to what Bush calls "the transforming power of faith." Higher on the social scale does not mean closer to God, and the people do not become more sinful because they are unemployed...
Religion can be a wonderful force in civic life. In a charitable organization, it can motivate people to give of themselves far beyond the call of duty. But when society, as Bush put it, "sees a need to help people," it should not look first to religious groups to provide the answer, especially when the problem is a social and not a spiritual one. The social compact should not be sub-contracted...
...prevailing mood is more resigned than defiant. "There?s an overwhelming sense here of powerlessness and very little faith in the government?s ability to protect citizens from acts of terror," says TIME Moscow correspondent Andrew Meier. "People are depressed and demoralized but have nowhere to look for help...