Extensions

Extension Activity (Volume II): The Founders Quotations on Government and Direct Assistance

Keeping in mind that the Founders were individuals and were rarely of one mind on any specific subject, write a one or two sentence summary of the Founders' views below on the role of government in providing charity to citizens. Then select one quotation and write a one-paragraph response:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
-Ben Franklin, 1766

To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it."
-Thomas Jefferson, 1816

[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.
-James Madison, 1824

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Extension Activity (Volume I): Theodore Roosevelt and the "Bully Pulpit"

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Lyndon B. Johnson

As President, Lyndon B. Johnson had surgery to remove his gall bladder. Some were concerned that he was more ill than he was letting on. In an effort to demonstrate that he...

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