Entitlement vs. Gratitude

Thomas Sowell on Welfare (see Milton Friedman in the room?) 


The following article happens to be a nice follow-up to the video and food for thought in both America and one's personal life.

Roger Scruton, writing in the April issue of the American Spectator: 

The proper response to a gift, even a gift of charity, is gratitude. People who feel gratitude also wish to express it. The easiest way is to give in one’s turn. By giving you pass on and amplify the goodwill that you received. Thus it is that, in America, where the tradition of giving is very much alive, and the state has not yet extinguished the desire or need for it, people give to their old school, to their university, to the hospital that cured them, to the local rescue service that saved them, and to the veterans who fought for them. They give without seeking or expecting recognition, but simply because gratitude is expressed through giving.

 However, the state is taking over many of the functions that were previously performed by charities—not least education, health care, and the relief of poverty. And the state deals on impersonal and equal terms with its citizens. It has no favorites, and it is governed by the rules—anything else is received by the citizens as an injustice. Hence charity is replaced by justice as the ruling principle upon which social benefits are distributed. But while charity deals in gifts, justice deals in rights. And when your receive what is yours by right you don’t feel grateful. Hence people who receive their education and health care from the state are less inclined to give to schools and hospitals in their turn—something that is borne out vividly by the figures concerning charitable giving. The spirit of gratitude retreats from social experience, and in countries like France and Germany, where civil society is penetrated at every level by the state, people give little or nothing to charity, and regard gifts with suspicion, as attempts to privatize what should be a matter of public and impartial concern.

 When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment. Since your queuing on equal terms with the competition, you will begin to think of the special conditions that entitle you to a greater, speedier, or a more effective share. You will be always one step from the official complaint, the court action, the press interview, and the snarling reproach against Them, the ones who owed you this right and also withheld it. That is the way European society is going, and American society may one day follow it.