Until recently, the moral tradition of our own country—and indeed of all Europe—taught that it was beneficent to give money indiscriminately to beggars. But the questioning of this rule, and investigation into it, led men to see that true beneficence is that which helps a man to do the work which he is most fitted for, not that which keeps and encourages him in idleness; and that to neglect this distinction in the present is to prepare pauperism and misery for the future.
(W. K. Clifford, "The Ethics of Belief," The Contemporary Review 29 [January 1877]: 289-309, at 304)
Note from KBJ: Would that progressives took these wise words to heart. Their actions and policies, while well-intended, produce bad outcomes.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 