Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Having often bandied the phrase "compassionate conservatism," Texas Gov. George W. Bush finally 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...
...religious right," a voting segment that Bush would like to win without public wooing. But his choice of words cannot veil the fact that the proposal would represent a philosophical retreat, not only from the small-government rhetoric of the 1994 Republican Revolution, but also from the modern social compact that America has developed since the New Deal. Handing off some of the government's programs to religious charities would not only endanger the programs but would handicap the charities and abdicate social responsibility for social ills...
Bush's proposal represents a shift in the provision of social services rather than an expansion. If funding for religious charities were increased, given the current budget climate, it is unreasonable to think that funding for the government's social programs--Bush's "secular alternatives"--would not decline. While some would rejoice in seeing motivated individuals supplant a government bureaucracy, this is not always good public policy...
Although it seems perfectly constitutional for the government to contract with religious groups to provide social services, many religious charities use the offer of services as bait for a proselytizing effort. This is not always a bad thing--many groups see their mission as feeding souls as well as stomachs--but it would be incompatible with federal funding, since the use of taxpayer dollars to proselytize is almost the definition of the "establishment of religion" prohibited in the Bill of Rights. These groups would be unable to transmit their religious message with public funds--meaning that something as simple...
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...