Silence Can Kill: Speaking Up to End Hunger and Make Our Economy Work for Everyone - Book - Page 12
Preface
most of it, if we determine to do so. However, only the government of “we the
people” can exert the essential leadership of making it a national commitment.
In referring to hunger and poverty, people occasionally say, “Let charity
do it.” They rarely mean that literally. They commonly mean, “Let free enterprise create jobs, and let charities take care of people in distress.” In other
words, reduce or bypass the role of government. That is a terrible mistake.
It overlooks the limitations of free enterprise. It lays on charities a burden
that lies way beyond their capacity. And it leads citizens to neglect the great
privilege that is ours as Americans to help determine the nation’s well-being
and our being well governed.
Free enterprise, charity, and government, along with families, communities, and good neighbors—all are necessary for ending hunger and reducing inequalities, each with its respective strengths, each respecting its
limitations, and each with its distinctive obligations. This book stresses the
responsibility that is ours as citizens and explains why it is crucial, at this
particular moment in history, that we press our nation’s leaders to get solidly behind the goals of eliminating hunger and making our economy fair.
Utopian? Those goals are so decent and so clearly within our grasp that we
would be fools to dismiss them as unachievable.
I make the case for this as an appeal to all people of good will, religious
and secular alike. However, because churches are inclined to promote only
charity as a response to hunger and poverty, the final chapter challenges
people of faith to see the contradiction between what they profess to believe
and their silence at the political level while others suffer and die.
Whether you are religious or not, Democrat, Independent, or Republican, it is time for all of us to end our silence and speak up.
Arthur Simon
January 2019
Disclosure: My views are influenced by the work of Bread for the World, the
citizens’ lobby that I helped to found and in which I am still actively engaged.
However, I freely express my own thinking in this book. Bread for the World
is not responsible for opinions of mine that wander beyond its agenda.
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