In December of 2005, Ellen Goodman wrote a column for the Boston Globe in which she pondered the general passivity and ignorance with which most of us, generous as we may be, approach our charitable giving. Her experience — and mine is similar — is that, upon reflection, we realize we actually know very little about many of the charities to which we direct our money. We pledge to the walk for Breast Cancer, but do we know how much of the money ends up actually used for research and whether that research is useful? The state Firefighters Association or the Association of Chiefs of Police asks for $25 and we think firefighters and policemen risk their lives for us and deserve our support — but do most of us have any idea how the money we give actually benefits firefighters or policemen? Even the large and well-known charities like the United Way or the Red Cross or our favorite church don’t always use their resources in ways we might expect or approve of.
The punch-line of Ms. Goodman’s column was a challenge to her readers to be less careless with their giving, to view it not merely as an act of compassion but as an act of social activism, to put some effort into envisioning what they want society to look like and to direct their resources with care into those organizations that can make the most progress toward achieving that vision.
And almost as an afterthought — but with the definite feeling that everything beforehand was leading up to this point — she challenged us to be equally discriminating in controlling the use of our tax dollars — in other words, to vote scrupulously for those who would use the government to further our own particular social vision.
Given the general sense in most of Ms. Goodman’s writings that almost any problem is best solved by some government program or regulation, I found an irony in her advocacy of individualized moral responsibility that I doubt she or many of her readers could see. I wrote this to try to point out that irony, but for some reason I don’t remember (but that probably involved some kind of holiday crisis) I never submitted it for publication. So here it is now, a year later but I believe still relevant.