It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness. […] Gollum in his own way, and with much more excuse as his acquaintance was much briefer, may have made a similar mistake, confusing kindness and blindness. — The Two Towers

My Take – There is a fine line between being nice and being a fool.

Few of us would begrudge the truly needy when asked for help.  The amount of voluntary charity in this country and in other free countries is amazing.  Maybe it’s religious, or cultural, or maybe hairless apes just know that the monkey they give fruit to on Monday might be the monkey they are asking for fruit on Friday.

But when charity gets taken for granted, or those to whom we give think we are unable to perceive abuses of our charity, we have to react.  Even worse is when our voluntary charity moves from being a moral obligation to being a legal obligation.

Frodo gave Gollum several chances to redeem himself.  He spared his life when Gollum first attacked him, he untethered him and trusted him to not run off, and eventually he made him an equal member of his group, even risking losing the ring and his quest to save Smeagol’s life.  Gollum repaid him by seeing his charity and kindness as weakness, and betrayed Frodo to Shelob in order to get the ring.

So too will those to whom we unwillingly donate our wages.  Programs for the poor, but able, have done nothing for them but to make them believe that they have a right to the sweat of our brows and the blood of our veins.  A large portion of our fortunes is paid to those who are physically able to work, but find an excuse not to.  Any attempts to get control of this and put them to work are met with derision and hostility.  It will be interesting to see how people react when the free money stops, and they learn that we may be kind, but we are not blind.