Mark Steyn highlights two stories that demonstrate two different views on being your brother’s keeper.
This one, about Obama and his actual brother:
In a TV infomercial a few days before his election, Obama declared that his “fundamental belief” was that “I am my brother’s keeper”.
Hmm. Back in Kenya, his brother lives in a shack on 12 bucks a year. If Barack is his brother’s keeper, why can’t he shove a sawbuck and a couple singles in an envelope and double the guy’s income? Ah, well: When Barack Obama claims that “I am my brother’s keeper”, what he means is that the government should be his brother’s keeper.
And this one, about Romney and an employee:
It is 1996. Mitt Romney is the head of Bain Capital in Boston. One of his employees comes to him, utterly distraught. His 14-year-old daughter snuck out of the house to go to a rave in New York and has been missing for three days. One of her teen friends said he gave her ecstasy and that he last saw her partying under a bridge.
Did Romney offer sympathy and hope? Write a check for a private detective? Wait for the government to solve it? No — he took responsibility. He took action. He shut down the firm and brought all the employees to New York. For 48 hours, they scoured the streets, going everywhere, asking teenagers if they’d seen the missing girl. Romney called on business associates to send more people to help until they numbered 200. He printed 300,000 fliers and got Duane Reade, one of Bain’s success stories, to put fliers in every shopper’s bag in their 52 stores. Romney set up a hotline. A broken-off phone call was traced; the girl was discovered in the basement of a house in New Jersey and reunited with her family.