Charity

How 'bout we think about charity for a minute or three. Most likely you have donated something in the past year or so, and I am venturing a guess that you have donated more than once. I have, but on my own terms, and in my own way.

I believe that 'charity begins at home'; and in that vein, I run the Cub Scout pack my sons belong to. Giving my time to help a group of young boys grow and mature. Of course this isn't considered a worthy enterprise anymore, but those of us involved wouldn't have it any other way. Through the scouts, I have also donated food to shelters, toys to the marines for Christmas, and countless hours of labor in local parks.

All of that is charity. The United Way; that is not charity, that is a huge business that doles out money to charitable organizations. UNICEF; not charity, but a multi-national socialistic movement, stealing more money than it distributes. All of these other large organizations, with maybe the exception of the Salvation Army, are no longer charities.

A charity is ALL volunteer. Back to the scouts, only the local packs and troops fall under my umbrella of charities as the district councils now have paid staffs. The monster groups I mentioned have hundreds of paid employees, and it has been disclosed that the upper management of these organizations make salaries that rise into the millions. Am I the only one that finds this unbelievably, incredibly, stupid? Why would you give money to a group that will take half of your money for 'overhead'? I can't even imagine it, not knowing where the money goes. You wouldn't simply give a shop clerk cash and accept whatever he or she decided to bring you, so why donate money to one of these monstrosities?

Now I know I am going to hear about how cold I am, but I have already mentioned that I give, sometimes till it hurts, literally. If more of us would pitch-in in this manner, instead of the 'feel good' company donation during December, there would be no need to pay someone millions to run the United Way, there wouldn't be any need for those monsters, and this Country would move just a little closer back towards where we started. Helping ones neighbor has never been wrong, but now we get tax write-offs for it, now we get bombarded by television commercials where multi-millionaire sports figures smile and tell us how it works. No, it starts right here, right in our own towns, in our own back yards. Keep that cash local, support your volunteer fire department, or give to the boy or girl scouts, at the pack or troop level, or pull a few weeds at the local park where you walk your dog.