Government and Compassion

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

~ Penn Jillette

Honestly, there were so many passages from that article worthy of being highlighted, but that one in particular stuck out at me. It's not uncommon to hear someone claim if you don't think government should be in the "charity" business, then you must hate poor people. The problem is that it's not about hating or not hating poor people. You can't be charitable with someone else's money, and you can't claim moral superiority when you use the threat of violence as a way to coerce "donations" out of people. Additionally, the system is so fraught with abuse that the stereotype of a welfare recipient is someone who games the system. That's compassion?