Let’s start with the increasingly common fingernails-on-the-blackboard phrase “speak to” as in this sentence from a recent editorial, “Federal, state and local money goes into a pool of funds out of which come block grants that speak to community services.” Block grants can’t speak and community services can’t listen or engage in conversation. There is no way in which this sentence makes sense, unless you’ve abandoned existing rules of English discourse.
The sentence is indicative of the lack of thought in the editorial in which it is embedded. According to the author, “helping selfless volunteers who deliver meals and a little good company…is a duty that government cannot deny.” There is no way to refute an argument like this because it does not rely on logic, it relies on the author feeling better about himself without any real burden.
The citizens who in the next few years will be in need of help of so many kinds are, like the generation before them, and the one before that, people who have helped build this state and this country into what they are through hard work and imagination and service to humankind, including military service.
For them to feel in any way abandoned or ignored would be simply…well, it just must not happen. All people, and their governments on all levels, must do their part to recognize, tangibly and intangibly, the nobility of the generations that have preceded them.
Fortunately, local governments and the federal government will take the editorial board’s donations if they feel strongly that government needs a role in this endeavor. Even better, they can donate their time and money directly to Meals on Wheels and other worthwhile causes to help seniors without limiting the opportunities for seniors themselves to volunteer or anyone whose calling is with children or in other areas.
