Tom Matlack wonders if fighting wars or feeding hungry children is the more manly thing to do.
If I could ask each candidate for President a single question it would be, “Do you believe you have any moral obligation to feed the hungry in this country?”
Four years ago, 27 million Americans got food stamps. As NPR reports, today that number is 46 million. It’s expected to keep climbing. One in three households in the state of Alabama get assistance buying groceries.
The program comes out to $2 per meal per person. Many of those being fed are children. Forty percent of those getting assistance have a job. They just don’t make enough to put food on the table.
Still, the argument goes, giving assistance to the poor even to fight starvation is enabling their poverty. They would get a job, or a better job, if the government would get the hell out of the way.
I had a spirited conversation with a service member stationed in Afganistan not long ago. I questioned whether Osama Bin Laden had actually succeeded in getting us to fight three middle eastern wars we cannot possibly win, costing us trillons of dollars we don’t have, and thereby cratering our economy. The courageous GI told me about all the people on the ground he and his platoon had saved. His view was that the wars could be justified on purely humanitarian grounds.
“I don’t doubt that you are doing amazing work,” I told him. “But how about the tens of thousands of children starving to death in Africa? Why should we let them die while we expend so much effort to attempt to instill democratic institutions in Iraq and Afganistan, thereby saving the populace from dictatorship?”
The next line of argument was about the imminent threat of terrorism on our shores. Again, I certainly thanked him for his courage and service, but asked who had been the most dangerous terrorists in America and Europe in the last year–Muslim fundamentalist from without or those born in Arizona, Norway, and England who had gone to extremes out of frustration over inequality at home?
The conversation boiled down to a pivotal discussion about the role of government—not abroad but right here at home. “How can we say that we shouldn’t feed our starving here at home if we send soldiers like you into harms way on a humanitarian mission half way around the world? Furthermore, if spending our precious capital on wars that we might not even be able to win causes more people to lose their jobs or be unable to feed their families—is that right?”
In the end we agreed to disagree. I can certainly respect that if your life is on the line, you really don’t have the wiggle room to think too much about whether the justification is valid. You have to do what you are told. That’s the patriotic thing to do.
But again, if I had one question for all the candidates for President, including President Obama, it would simply be whether or not we have a moral obligation to feed our own hungry? Is it more manly to fight wars or feed children?
The shocking thing to me is that public sentiment—and a majority of the current crop of would be national leaders—seem to believe that government is bad, budgets need to be cut, and that caring for our own in event the most basic way is not manly. It’s enabling poor. As if they had a choice in the matter.
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Photo by: i5a / Flickr
It is amazing that our ability to keep our people fed, clothed, healthy and educated is being whittled away to keep them safe from threats. What is the point of safety if you don’t have the tools you need to survive on your own. I really would like to see this change but I’m not sure how it could happen with the way the government is set up right now. At the moment the military budget and the choice to go to war is pretty much out of the hands of the people. I think it is delusional to think… Read more »
Yes, we have a moral obligation to care for those who need it most. The problem, as many conservatives will point out, is the potential for gaming the system. Does that happen? Yes. The system is not and never will be perfect. But you can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Good people—hard-working, honest people—get assistance making ends meet. And I’m fine with a portion of my taxes going to that end. Much more so than funding wars in which I don’t personally believe.
Nice piece Tom.
I think it is manly to make sure that your citizens have the basic needs. It is caring and strong. I work for a living. Let me rephrase… I bust my ever loving ass off at work to provide for my family. All that ass busting amounts to less than a grand a month. My rent and car payment alone take half of that already. I receive assistance in buying food for my family. If my children depended on the paycheck to feed them, they would still be waiting for breakfast this morning. The problem is not people being poor.… Read more »
This is a “test comment” to see if it automatically goes on my facebook page… :/ If not, I’ll be back. 🙂
Of course your brave soldier tells you he’s doing good. Do you interview manly social workers or community organizers?
Is the “volunteer” military about manliness or going where the jobs are?
My high-school-teacher wife tells about helping students who aspire to military careers. If she has students looking forward to helping raise up people who are poor and hungry, I don’t hear about them.
Tom,
Great piece. The very debate we need to have as citizens of not only this country, but as citizens of the world. Makes one wonder how we justify the cost of the continued wars and our place in policing the world in the future.
Excellent piece. More people were killed in the US by dogs than terrorists in the last year. Yet we keep bombing foreigners back to the stone age and then building them new schools, roads and hospitals instead of us.