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Transforming Welfare: The Revival of American Charity
Welfare reform has become the defining domestic policy priority of the 1990s,
and the debate about welfare now underway has brought up important questions:
How should the system be reformed-all at once or through careful and incremental
steps? What will replace the centralized welfare state when it is gone? Will
a system of decentralized governmental institutions do the job, or will private
charity prove more effective?
The contributors to this volume do not pretend to have all the answers, but
they do agree that the present system cannot and should not last. For too long,
federal, state, and local social policy has ignored the principles of charity
that once guided our actions toward the poor. By offering an alternative, this
book hopes to contribute to the restoration of an ethic that can be the foundation
of a truly free and humane system of social assistance, one that replaces the
increasingly questionable, centralized welfare state
- David T. Beito
shows how fraternal organizations once functioned as providers of social assistance.
- Gertrude
Himmelfarb draws on Victorian England to distinguish the foundations and
consequences of state-sponsored relief from those of privately-operated charity.
- Glenn C. Loury
shows why a restoration of charity demands a renewed discourse of virtue.
- Marvin Olasky examines the seven
principles that provided the basis for successful charitable action one hundred
years ago.
- Amy L.
Sherman reßects on the recent developments in welfare reform and the opportunities
and challenges they present to the faith community.
- Robert A. Sirico
sketches the moral and philosophic principles that must undergird any replacement
of the welfare state. It is the hope of the contributors that reform can be
based on a sustained and thoughtful refection of what actually constitutes
"welfare." They believe that for too long, social policy has ignored
the principles of charity that once guided our actions toward the poor. They
maintain that in the process, both the recipients and the givers were made
worse off. By offering an alternative, this book hopes to contribute to the
restoration of an ethic that can be the foundation of a truly free and humane
system of social assistance, one that replaces the increasingly questionable,
centralized welfare state.
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