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This piece that I had to read for English Lit was interesting. Maddening, actually. I had to actually read it twice before I could write about it. The piece was "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. My thoughts were:

In his piece, A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift decries the poverty of Ireland’s children. He notices them running rampant in the streets, neglected and hungry. Frustrated with a system that caters to rich landlords and devours the poor, he attempts with satire to display the ridiculousness of the attitude of the rich. He proposes that the poor sell their children as food for the rich. Since the rich already take everything the poor own and consume their money, why not allow them also to eat child’s flesh. He targets landlords, the government, and Catholic-hating Protestants for oppressing and taking advantage of the poor. With satire, he shows them that their actions are just as revolting as selling children as food.

I am surprised because I intersect with A Modest Proposal more than I would expect. We live in a country where the problem of child poverty, though still alive, is much dissipated. However, I feel that we have gone to another extreme in our country. We reward laziness with Welfare and our children still suffer from poverty stricken homes. Perhaps the problem lies not with the lack of government involvement in the lives of poor people but with an attitude that poverty itself is inherently bad. Children, both poor and rich, suffer from depravity of the worst sort. Parental attention and love have all but disappeared from many American homes. Children need love, not money. They need consistent rules and boundaries, not more commodities. If a child goes without many “necessities”, ie: more than one pair of jeans, socks without holes, etcetera, and yet grows into a law-abiding, kind, godly person, they have suffered very little in the way of development. However, a child lavished with every nicety known to man who grows up selfish and defiant has suffered much and likely will be more unhappy than the poor person. If a child goes without physical comforts and in addition is allowed to run the streets and govern himself, he likely will grow up rebellious as well. It appears to me that a child who is consistently loved and disciplined grows into a more enjoyable and useful adult than if he is either coddled or emotionally neglected and that economic wellbeing has very little to do with it.

I feel that I should qualify what I’ve said. I do believe that we ought to help the poor if possible, and that the government can be a useful tool in accomplishing this. I believe that if children are well managed, and adults are hard-working, helping those who are underprivileged is a worthy endeavor. However, I do not believe that those who refuse to work should be coddled or ignored, but rather given work to do that they might provide as much as possible for themselves. If we are willing to work for what we need, the extra help from churches or governments is well appreciated. Working in the medical field helps me to see that so many who receive help and are not required to work see the help as “owed to them” and become selfish and demanding. When I see laziness rewarded and selfishness bred, I question whether we have not come to an equally appalling and hurtful extreme as is decried in A Modest Proposal.

What, therefore, do I propose? I propose quite simply to require people to work, even to work hard, for the help that they receive. Idleness produces a plethora of evils, such as drunkenness, substance abuse, sexual crimes, and more. As a society, we have allowed selfishness and laziness to take over. Children ought to be educated properly, fed enough to be full and clothed well enough to be warm. Adults ought to work as hard as they must to provide for their families. If children must work after school to help support themselves, let them work. We speak of “letting children be children”. By this we mean, “don’t let them work or take life too seriously until they are grown.” I argue, however, that a child who learns at an early age to work hard and think seriously has a better chance of succeeding as an adult.

Let us consider the words of the wise man in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and to enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward. Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.” (Ecclesiastes 5:18-19) This man wisely tells us to work hard and to enjoy what we earn from what we work, be it little or much. I choose to take his advice and work hard and help those in need when able. What will you choose?