But to draw a line between local commitment and political involvement, to urge one and condemn the other, is wrong headed. Private charity cannot do it alone. Public guarantees, public programs are vital if poor children are to be given a fair start, if working poor people are to have a chance, if the hungry are to be fed, the homeless housed, the ill cared for. The most effective private charities, in fact, depend upon public provision. Reduce the public subsidy, as the Reagan administration did, and you reduce the number of lives touched.
Private charities do wonderful work in our prisons.
But drastic cuts in public resources for treatment of addiction, for rehabilitation, for training and education have made prisons into universities for crime rather than a place to turn one's life around. Too often the saintly look upon the unseemly world around them with disgust. They seek purity, refuge from the many compromises and corruptions they see around them. But the poor, working people, parents struggling to educate their children don't have the privilege of saying my way or the highway. The choices that seem so insignificant from the hills of privilege or purity are dramatic for those laboring in the valleys from day to day.