The op-ed, entitled "Don't Give Up on America" is written by a liberal novelist named Marilynne Robinson, who writes:

As a liberal, I am loyal to this country in ways that make me a pragmatist. If someone is hungry, feed him.

Now, mind you, assuming that Robinson is a standard liberal, she is not simply suggesting that people should, as a moral or ethical principle, help someone who is hungry. If that's all that she was saying, that would be fine.

But that's not what liberals mean when they say "feed the hungry." What they are saying is that government should force people to feed the hungry.

The problem is that liberals see no difference between the concept of voluntary help for others and the concept of forcing people to help others. For them, it's all one and the same thing.

That's undoubtedly why Robinson refers to America as a "family." For her, every American citizen is part of this national family. Thus, when the government forces people to help out others, for the liberal it's no different from a parent who forces his child to share his toys with his siblings.

That of course is the mindset of those who run socialist countries. Under socialism, the state owns everything and everyone works for the state. It's all just one great big socialist family, with the state serving as parent. The state decides how much everyone's income — or allowance — will be. Wealth is equalized. Through the coercive apparatus of the state, everyone is made to share with everyone else.