Leadership Program of the Rockies

President Barack Obama recently defended a proposal to limit tax deductions for charitable giving.  The idea touches an important element of leadership. 
 
As a nation, ours has always been defined from within - by the greatness of its people, especially in challenging times.   For more than two centuries, civic leaders have shown deference to the charitable instincts of the American people as an efficient way to marshal resources for the public good.
 
Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 classic Democracy in America noted the American tendency to form voluntary associations to address charitable objectives.  He wrote, "The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools."
 
Contrasting the bureaucracies of France and England with America's charitable tradition, de Tocqueville wrote, "Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association."
 
Charity is a theological virtue - an habitual and firm disposition to do good.  Capitalism's clear record is to support and produce enormously higher levels of true charity than does bureaucracy.
 
Replacing the rational, virtuous, charitable impulses of millions with the institutional force of the bureaucracy would signal a nation defined by rulers than the liberty of free people.  Defenders of capitalism must lead in charity, understanding it as an individual virtue.
 
Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave." This thought is often summed by the phrase Lex orandi est lex credendi (The law of prayers dictates the law of belief). 
 
In other words, what we exhibit externally reflects what we believe internally.  LPR is a charitable association predicated upon liberty, personal responsibility and leadership. 
 
Bureaucracy could never conceive such an important undertaking.  In America, we wouldn't expect it to.