Thank you, benjammin, for expressing my thoughts much more eloquently than did I.

Dweste, I am not against helping people. As I stated somewhere on these forums, I went to Mississippi after Katrina and volunteered for a week to help a local police department that was overwhelmed by the storm's devastation. I went on my own time, drove my own vehicle, took my own gear, took my own food and water and paid my own way. Others went to do the same work only because they were being paid 40-75 bucks per hour, with all wages and expenses being paid by various entities (government, charities, etc.).

I'm a volunteer and good neighbor, right up to the point where I cease to be a volunteer, by definition, because the good deed is demanded of me. I once watched a news clip of flood victims being interviewed. They lived along a large river that flooded on a regular basis. I was dumbfounded when one guy stated, rather proudly, that this was the third time that their home had been destroyed by floods and that they planned to rebuild on the exact same spot. I could only wonder how many times that man had to stick his hand in a fire before finally determining that it wasn't a wise thing to do. How many times must we be forced to help someone like that before we tell them that they are on their own?