Change? This is loony.
When volunteering becomes compulsory, it's not volunteering any more, is it? Same difference between charity and taxes. Same as the draft.
Plus, where I live, there are more volunteers than there are things to do. The chance to teach English to Hispanics has a long waiting list, and the Red Cross says "We'll call you if we need you." They have to form committees to try to "identify unmet needs." In other words, well-intentioned housewives and retired guys have to make up things to do because everybody who wants "help" already gets more than they can handle, and most New England folks seem too proud to accept help anyway. The old culture dies hard.
Are people really so helpless in America that they need pimply high-schoolers or condescending do-gooder college kids - who know nothing at all about life - to "help" them?
I very much doubt it. But I don't know anybody who isn't happy to cash a check or to take a freebie from the gummint to buy a new iPod. People are always happy to accept cash from "the gummint," because it doesn't feel so much like you're ripping off your neighbor.
A Comment from our News Junkie:
I have soured on do-gooderism. I have been to Katrina, to Appalachia, to NYC (where I now live), to Haiti and to Africa over the years with church groups, and every time I went the locals drank wine or moonshine or some kind of African hootch, and smoked in lawn chairs or lounging in the grass while telling jokes while we "helped." In Africa, the guys took occasional drinking breaks to visit the local whorehouse while we supposedly did stuff "for them." It's humiliating to all concerned, as if people were children; embarassing to the recipients and to the doers. Never saw anybody local ever offer to do so much as to pick up a hammer, a shovel, or a mop. I'm done with that approach to virtuousness. People have to want to help themselves, or there is not a damn thing you can do. "Wanting to help" is pure social imperialism of the most soft-headed sort. I once helped build a church building in Africa, and now feel foolish about it because a church is not a building - it's people. The building was insignificant except when it rained. They could have built a better one, better suited to their area, with poles and thatch (and much more cheaply) in a few days if they felt like it. What we built will no doubt be attacked by termites and fall down.
Live and learn. What people want is cash to spend the way they want to.
