Public service is noble

What happened to public service? It used to be a privilege to serve; now some see it as people feeding at the public trough.

Being able to provide public service was seen as an honor, if not a noble calling — teaching, delivering the mail, fighting fires, being a police officer, being a social worker and being a clerk who staffs our public offices — to name a few. They were, and are, proud to serve the public. Our parents and clergy know and tell us of the joy and importance of giving to others and the community and to share, love and care for the poor without judging; it still gives us joy, but now is confined to Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Our state was built on a foundation of values; community; caring for each other; and, most important, faith, hope and love. Our predecessors created institutions to perpetuate those values — schools, religions, public/private social services and service organizations. During the Great Depression, when crops were failing, unemployment was high, bread and soup lines were long, the number of widows with infants and children was growing and with volunteer philanthropy unable to meet the overwhelming needs of the time, the federal government stepped in to help.

Such a system of caring and public service met the needs of people in keeping with our values and the transition of our nation from an agrarian to an industrial economy. As we moved into the information era, our society became more complex, sophisticated and mobile; we became more impersonal and divided by economic stratification. As a consequence, our opportunity to know or care for others was diluted by distance and less personal interaction. "The poor will always be with us" takes on a different meaning; they are still with us, now just not as visible.

This new generation has not experienced such times and lacks understanding of the problems poor people face. They see poverty as people making bad choices and that the government has no responsibility to help them; thus comes a clash between changing times and our values of caring for the less fortunate, our community responsibility and the values taught in our churches. Our lawmakers, when in office, seem to forget those lessons. Some now find it politically expedient to label government-help programs as socialism, rather than working to find new ways to deal with the social problems of a changing world. Thomas Jefferson noted, " … with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times."