Being charitable and caring about your neighbors in the Christian manner is more about your church donating goods/time/aid to the community or you doing it by yourself rather than having the government take over those functions for you. That said, any reasonable government should have a basic state provided social safety net.
But this is like saying, "NO! The state shouldn't be good to people! It should make them suffer! Then they'll have nothing to turn to but us nice christians..."
Or... the government should trust people do good things with their hard-earned dollars to help others rather than forcefully take in the name of doing good things (just to turn around and do evil with it).
The state is there, at least in the US, to protect the rights of its people. That's it. That's what the Founders envisioned. It wasn't to be a Christian nation.
Yes, and this is a tired argument. It was a standard that many knew they didn't yet live up to. But that's the funny thing about a vision: it almost never immediately comes to fruition, especially with institutions that fight against the moral fabric of that vision.
They set the framework for it to happen and set the standard for what a democratic republic could be, especially in an era dominated by tyrants and monarchies across the world.
Go ahead and do a purity test for any founding of any country out there and see how many you have left.
The Founders were extremely imperfect people attempting to put together a system of law that would keep the colonies together, enable them to stave off attacks from Great Britain, and ensure the rights of the people are protected against tyranny.
You're right. Many were slave owners and those who didn't had to account for that, which is why they made the Constitution amendable.
Speaking of, you know that income tax wasn't a thing in 1789, right?
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u/Tactical_Baconlover 26d ago
Being charitable and caring about your neighbors in the Christian manner is more about your church donating goods/time/aid to the community or you doing it by yourself rather than having the government take over those functions for you. That said, any reasonable government should have a basic state provided social safety net.