A New Year’s Resolution that Can Strengthen Civil Society

Collette Caprara / January 01, 2010

In his recent Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, civil society expert Bill Schambra charged conservatives who say “that’s a job for civil society” to “be able to name and demonstrate immediate acquaintance with at least a dozen actual examples of civil society doing the job, in the form of grassroots groups personally visited and funded.” That’s a good New Year’s Resolution, and one that should also lead to greater alliance between conservatives and faith-based grassroots leaders and community healers who are putting conservative principles of human dignity and personal responsibility into action among communities in need.

Their approach is fundamentally different from liberal ideologues who, for more than 40 years, have channeled trillions of taxpayers’ dollars into a vast array of programs and entitlements in the name of America’s poor and disenfranchised minorities. (more…)