Don’t force US communities to be benevolent

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Phil Williams | Contributor

The news is replete with stories of unexpected drop-offs of migrants in small towns — Alabama towns like Sylacauga, where my grandaddy grew up, and Albertville, just up the way on Sand Mountain.

These are salt-of-the-earth places where Friday night football means Monday bragging rights, the local VFW still holds community cookouts and the Methodists always beat the Baptists to the restaurant on Sunday after church.

Good folks, real folks. But insecure in their own communities.

They’re not bad people. They have a heart for the poor and downtrodden. These are folks who would give the shirt off their backs and bring a meal to a sick neighbor.

Their sudden insecurity stems from being forced to be benevolent — forced by their government, against their will, to expend resources. That’s not how benevolence works; that’s how benevolence dies.

In essence, the government can legally make you give. But just because it can does not mean that it should.

“Benevolence is one of the distinguishing characteristics of man,” a Chinese philosopher once said. “[R]eligion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress,” the Book of James reminds us. Caring for others is a part of what makes a well-ordered society function.

But Auburn University Professor Emeritus Tibor Machen once wisely said, “Generosity is a moral virtue that cannot flourish in a welfare state or in any sort of command economy, because to be generous is to voluntarily help others in certain ways. It will flourish in a free society.”

Machen went on to say, “… If generous behavior were not freely chosen, but instead coerced by law, its moral import would vanish.... It would cease to be generous.”

When the government forces communities to act benevolently, then goodness gives way to compulsion. “You will give, or else! You will give now, or be deemed a racist! We have ways of making you give!”

Let’s be clear. There is a vast difference between someone who gives from the heart and someone from whom much is taken.

You may have a beautiful home that you freely share with others, something you worked for over years, and being one who is blessed, you decide to bless others.

Imagine one day you woke to the sound of unknown, unannounced, uninvited people making use of your home. No warning of their arrival. No care or concern for your security. Your hard-earned possessions are being used, your food eaten, your clothes worn by others, your clean house trampled. Strangers keep arriving on your doorstep and walking in the door because someone, somewhere, somehow, with a position in the government, told them they could do so.

Just like that you no longer feel peaceful in your own home. You have no ill will toward others. Yet now you feel abused and unsafe in your own home. You question whether life will ever be the same.

Let the feelings of that analogous story sink in. How would you feel? What would you do?

As I mentioned in a previous article, what I just described is a micro version of life in cities and towns all over America. What if the house represented a whole community or a state? Mass migration is overrunning our homes, communities and states.

In recent days, small-town Alabama joined big-city America in struggling to understand and accommodate huge numbers of Biden/Harris migrants they didn’t know were coming.

It’s one thing to be benevolent; it’s quite another to be forced to be benevolent.

Towns like Springfield, Ohio, are adding a third more residents to their small community. Waves of third-world humanity are being flown into the country by the Biden/Harris administration and simply dropped off.

New York City initiated a plan to pay illegal immigrants up to $4,000 to move out of the migrant shelters because the Big Apple can’t sustain the decay. Recent reports from the NYPD indicate that 75% of all crime in Midtown Manhattan is being committed by illegal immigrants.

Aurora, Colorado, has Venezuelan gangs taking over whole apartment complexes and terrorizing citizens.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform reports that students who have limited English now cost American school systems up to $60 billion per year. The state of Texas has spent more than $11 billion trying to stem the tide of mass illegal immigration on its border.

As I’ve said previously, our house is in disarray.

Progressives will mock and deride anyone for expressing their concerns. We are privileged and must be benevolent, they say. But it becomes nigh unto impossible to be benevolent when your resources are stripped away.

We must remember that a giving heart is a thing of God. And when the giver is commanded to give, he loses the ability, and even the desire to do so. Benevolence cannot be forced. It is a “want-to” thing, not a “forced-to” thing.

We must restore order so we can continue to be a blessing to others. We cannot be forced into benevolence. That’s not how this works.

Phil Williams is a former state senator from District 10 (which includes Etowah County), retired Army colonel and combat veteran, and a practicing attorney. He previously served with the leadership of the Alabama Policy Institute in Birmingham. He currently hosts the conservative news/talk show Rightside Radio on multiple channels throughout north Alabama. The opinions expressed are his own.

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