Conservative Steps In To Help Obama’s Brother With Medical Bills

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Written By:
Rob Port

Aug 16, 2012
4:49pm

Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza writes about how he stepped in to help the President’s brother with private charity.

A few days ago I received a call from a man I recently met named George. He was a bit flustered, and soon informed me that his young son was sick with a chest condition. He pleaded with me to send him $1,000 to cover the medical bills. Since George was at the hospital I asked him to let me speak to a nurse, and she confirmed that George’s son was indeed ill. So I agreed to send George the money through Western Union. He was profusely grateful. But before I hung up I asked George, “Why are you coming to me?” He said, “I have no one else to ask.” Then he said something that astounded me, “Dinesh, you are like a brother to me.”

Actually, George has a real life brother who just happens to be the president of the United States. (George Obama is the youngest of eight children sired by Barack Obama Sr.) George’s brother is a multimillionaire and the most powerful man in the world. Moreover, George’s brother has framed his re-election campaign around the “fair share” theme that we owe obligations to those who are less fortunate.

One of Obama’s favorite phrases comes right out of the Bible: “We are our brother’s keeper.” Yet he has not contributed a penny to help his own brother. And evidently George does not believe, even in times of emergency, that he can turn to his brother in the White House for help.

So much for spreading the wealth around.

Obama’s refusal to help George is especially surprising because George doesn’t just live in American-style poverty but rather in Third World poverty. He lives in a shanty in the Huruma slum in Nairobi. He gets by on a few dollars a month. Obama also has an aunt named Hawa Auma, his father’s sister, who ekes out a living selling coal on the streets of a small village in Kenya. She says she would like to have her teeth fixed, but she cannot afford it. Obama hasn’t offered to help her either.

I’ve always been fascinated with Obama’s relationship with his family. It’s a well-known fact that both his aunt and his half-brother life in poverty – his aunt lives on US government welfare and his half-brother lives in abject, third-world poverty – yet the President, who certainly has the means to help, does nothing.

I can’t speak to what motivates the president in these decisions, but I suspect it has a great deal to do with his ideology. The left simply does not like the idea of private charity. They don’t want citizens to depend on themselves, or their friends and neighbors and private charitable organizations. They want people dependent on the government.

That’s why conservatives have been found to be more consistently charitable with their own time and wealth than our friends on the left. Conservatives, generally, believe in individual action. The left believes in collective action. The right believes in doing what they can with their own time, talent and money. The left believes in doing what they can with other people’s time, talent and money.

Which isn’t to say that liberals don’t want to help people. I think they do, and I think their motivations are often fairly pure. It’s just that they want to provide that help through top-down government programs instead of individually. It’s one of the fundamental divides between those who believe in limited government and those who believe in expansive government, and it manifests itself, I think, in the President’s behavior towards his family.