Written by: Beck

One of the elements necessary to holding together a free society is the presence of thriving civic institutions. Whether you're talking about the Rotary Club, the Special Olympics, or the American Heart Association, non-governmental service & charitable institutions make a nation strong.

What makes a nation weak is when these functions are replaced by government bureaucracies. While a government agency can conceivably provide the same services as, say, the United Way, those agencies can rarely do it as efficiently. More importantly, government agencies lack many things which non-governmental civic institutions have. For one thing, it's all voluntary. Charitable organizations employees work there because they want to, and donations come from people who want to give, not who are forced to give.

What's more, the existence of and participation in civic institutions serves to strengthen communities and bring people together, while governmental institutions serve to dehumanize people, reduce very personal issues to cold data and statistics, and also inspires a sense of entitlement, which ultimately leads to resentment.

The actual purpose of this post isn't to tear into government provision of charity; rather, it is to emphasize the importance of private charitable institutions. And because of that, it is with great disgust that I see that Target stores have decided to ban Salvation Army bell-ringers from working in front of their stores this Christmas.

Salvation Army chapters in West Michigan and elsewhere are scrambling to decide how to replace donations to Christmas bell-ringers outside Target stores after the retailer banned the ubiquitous holiday fixture.

Volunteers collected nearly $9 million at Target stores across the nation last year.

Target's new policy will be a blow to the Salvation Army of Muskegon, which also struggles to find enough volunteer bell-ringers, said Major Max Grindle, commanding officer of the local Salvation Army.

[...]

"I know the reasons for businesses to say no (to kettles), but that's part of what is odd to me. There's research that shows businesses that have a holiday bell-ringer during the season tend to do better," said Captain Dan Leisher of the Grand Haven Salvation Army, 310 N. DeSpelder.

Inasmuch as there aren't any Target stores close by, saying I plan to boycott them isn't saying much. However, I ask other blog authors out there to bring attention to this. The blogosphere is quite capable of bringing enormous pressure to bear on an issue (as Rathergate so amply demonstrated). Perhaps if enough pressure is brought to bear on Target, they'll have to reverse their policy.

(Hat tip: Mr. Minority)