November 19, 2007 - News

We've Broken Faith with the Poor
There's not much we can really do about Iran, George W. Bush or the sabre rattling of North Korea but surely that doesn't absolve us from the obligation our poet placed upon our shoulders. Perfection is always the enemy of improvement and so it is here. For we should look at our own society and see the people with whom, in John McCrae's words, we've broken faith. Why is anyone impoverished in a country as rich as we are? I suppose that's because we refuse to break the faith with an uncontrolled capitalism which promises and never delivers help to the poor and the lame. Margaret Thatcher, in supporting little regulated capitalism because it would supposedly make the money needed to look after the disadvantaged, said: "No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well." No doubt that's true. But what else is true is that he in fact gave up some of that money to help another.