Rush Limbaugh is taking heat again, only this time he got it backwards. With the massive outpouring of humanitarian goodwill from Americans produced by Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti (a country already on the long list of corrupt, failed states) the radio talk-show host exhorted listeners to refrain from donating to the impromptu rash of charities (especially the White House’s) aimed at soliciting money for relief efforts, on the grounds that citizens are already shelling out millions through their taxes. “We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax…." Limbaugh said.

Well, um, yes….  But that’s not the point. The point is that charity is voluntary, or at least it should be. But taxation “for humanitarian purposes” takes, as in steals, money from all citizens for every conceivable noble work, thereby diminishing the capability of charities to solicit, and obtain, donations. In a free society, individuals and groups should decide, based on their understanding of the issue and, hopefully, their research of the soliciting organization, whether to contribute and how much to give. Government provides no such option.

The White House Website, of course, is a different story. Internet users can easily look up the track records of those lending their names, as the “faces” of the web site.  Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush are soliciting donations and organizing various aspects of the relief effort. One can examine their track records on other issues and decide on that basis whether to contribute to the sites they publicize.

Parishioners may donate through their churches. Due to recent friction on hot-button issues in various denominations, such as the Episcopal Church USA, individuals may decide to donate through their local churches providing that their money bypasses the larger, umbrella denomination’s coffers and, maybe, the National Council of Churches as well.

With taxes, however, there is no question of bypassing anything. There is no guarantee that some of the money will not be siphoned off for other uses, either.

Americans have a big heart, due mostly to the nation’s Christian ideals, which include dual concepts of personal sacrifice and compassion, which are imparted early on as virtues. Many countries, even “religious” ones, do not press these virtues, so it is no surprise that their citizens are reticent to rush to the financial aid of others in far-off lands when they have their hands full minding the needs of family, friends and the needy just a mile or so away.

Recent surges in taxation for “humanitarian aid,” coupled to well-publicized statistics relating to both legal and illegal immigration, give people from Third World nations “temporary protected status,” which usually turns out to be permanent.  Add to that “political asylum,” and you have hundreds of thousands of unsponsored immigrants streaming to our shores every decade or so: according to the Congressional Research Service, some 300 Somalis; 500 Sudanese; 70,000 Hondurans; 3,500 Nicaraguans; 229,000 El Salvadorians since 1991 — and these were just the victims of natural disasters, not asylum-seekers. If you count asylum, there are far more — and many become permanent welfare recipients because they (and their offspring) cannot adjust to our culture despite all that social workers try to do for them.

The concept of sponsorship used to alleviate much of the acclimatization problem. Immigration laws based on sponsorship once protected U.S. citizens by denying a visa to certain applicants; in particular, those who:

• Had a communicable disease, or a dangerous physical or mental disorder.
• Had committed serious criminal act(s).
• Were known criminals, subversives, members of a totalitarian party, or had been convicted for war crimes.
• Had used illegal means to enter the U.S.

Thanks in part to the United Nations concept of redistribution of wealth in the service of social justice, all that has been swept away. And much of our largesse via taxation has neither earned us the friendship of the intended populations nor ensured any measure of good will from their governments.

In response to increased worries about terrorism, the Center for American Progress released a proposal for a mass deportation policy for some 10 million undocumented persons in the U.S. as of July 2005, to say nothing of the 500,000 that crosses the border each year.

These statistics were reported in newspapers nationwide. The organization’s data analysis estimated a cost of at least $206 billion over 5 years ($41.2 billion annually), and possibly as high as $230 billion. Apparently, Center statisticians (who must have been smoking something funny that day) arrived at these figures after assuming that 2 million of the 10 million illegals would leave the U.S. on their own!

Bottom line:  Rush Limbaugh is right that we cannot keep subsidizing the world and that we ought to be careful with charitable donations, if indeed that is what he meant. But he was in error in implying that it is established charities per se that need to be avoided. It is mass taxation, without any choice as to how, or even whether, humanitarian aid is distributed, that needs to be avoided.

Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies as well as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper (Johnson Space Center).  Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).

 

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333maxwell said:

	Mr Limbaugh I've been visiting with the ghost of Woodie Guthrie of late, and wrote a lil ditty and created a video explaining everything I know and feel about Mr Limbaugh. If you would like to view and listen to this all original work, click my website, or visit Youtube directly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzcCMKZY2u8
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January 15, 2010 | url
Votes: -2

DDW said:

	Get back To the Constitution and most of these financial nightmares would vanish in short order.
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January 15, 2010
Votes: +7

Pat Henry said:

charity Amen! In regard to investigating charities, I urge people to remember that former Presidents, UNICEF (and other UN type organizations), as well as many mainline denominations have a fundamental premise - that population control through birth control (including abortion, especially of the "feeble") and sterilization is a basic way of "helping" the poor. It is better to give to those you know are sending direct aid than to the convenient door to door panhandlers, in general. Re: the Planned Parenthood (racist, eugenics) agenda mentioned, see the 2 minute overview video on this page: http://bound4life.com/

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January 18, 2010
Votes: +3

SCHNORCHEL said:

	Will the United Nations really help Haiti? The supposed injection of U.N. aid in Haiti will probably have the same effect as the genocide in Rwanda and the murdering of people in the Congo. The UN will just stand by and let the "natives" suffer. For how the UN handles such events, please visit http://www.thenewamerican.com/...-in-africa . Get US out! of the United Nations
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January 18, 2010
Votes: +3

cmt said:

keep things in context Rush was responding to a caller who said he was wondering about the sensibiity of donating to Haiti through whitehouse.gov, as Obama was urging people to do. Rush did make the comment about already donating to Haiti through our income taxes, but you had to hear the entire answer to get what he was talking about. People on "both sides" take things out of context, from Bible verses to Rush Limbaugh, and when you research and discover that someone did that, they appear puny and petty and deceptive.

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January 21, 2010
Votes: +0