Caring for these people shouldn't be compulsory, government mandated.
Isn't everything a government does, or is supposed to do, in one way or another, related to caring?
"Our bridges our crumbling! The dam over our town is about to erupt!"
"We don't care!"
"I just found out, my job has been using these chemicals they said were safe, and now, half my coworkers have cancer... and I just found a lump."
"We don't care!"
"I worked my whole life, and suddenly, at 55, I got laid off! I sent out 400 resumes, and not one call. Not one. I don't have enough food in the house, and I have no money left. I have a 8 year old, and she's crying, she's hungry... worse, I just got a foreclosure notice, and I think my cough is turning into pneumonia!"
"We don't care!"
"There are soldiers in boats invading the shores!"
"We don't care!"
"Help, 911! My house is on fire!"
"We don't care!"
"Someone just broke into my house! Please, we need police!"
"We don't care!"
"I'm having a heart attack!"
"We don't care!"
"Hi, I'm Joe Candidate, and I'm running for Senate. And I want you all to know.. I don't care! So please, vote for the guy who doesn't care! Why should I care? Big oil funded my campaign, and they just reaped billions of dollars in extra profits by raising your prices at the pumps! And guess what folks... they paid not one dime in taxes last year! Not one dime! I don't care about that either! Next week, they want us to subsidize their drilling in the Gulf, right near where those folks all lost their businesses in the oil spill... but I'm proud to announce, as long as those oil companies keep funding my campaigns and the gullible folks reading Ayn Rand, drinking tea and supporting my candidacy even while they lose their livelihoods too and blame other poor people for their troubles... I don't care! I'm Joe Candidate, and I approve this message!"
Stop.
Founding Fathers. Let's go back to the Constitution.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution, for the United States of America.
What is the purpose of a government?
* more perfect union
* justice
* domestic tranquilty
* common defense
* general welfare
* blessings of liberty, for ourselves and our posterity.
While there are people starving, homeless, hard-working people thrown out of jobs and evicted from their homes because of the greed of big business, people being overworked and underpaid and uncompensated for their labor, as long as these people exist--as they do exist, increasingly so in the last several decades--none of the things on the above list is being accomplished by our government. Not one.
It's a governments job to care. If the government does not care, we should not vote for them.
Compulsory caring on the part of the government? You betcha. If the government doesn't care about the people who elected them, then we will vote them out... and those who have been favoring the billionaires and the corporations that have been tearing down our nation, corporations paying not one dime in tax although they reap billions in profits and actually getting subsidies and bailouts, even as the hard-working people, and that's most of us, and the disabled and ill and elderly, are losing their homes and lives to corporate greed, deserve to be voted out.
Increases in poverty = increases in crime = decrease in domestic tranquility. Imperfect union. Injustice.
What happens when a government doesn't care? Revolution. Remember a Queen who once said, "Let them eat cake!"
Charlie