Philosophy of collectivism - it never works.

Freedom from poverty is essentially different from the freedom of gays and lesbians to lead their own lives. What does it take to be free to marry your partner? Only that nobody else intervene. What does it take to have freedom from poverty? Does someone have to act to provide you a well paying job? Does someone have to act to provide minimal services? That would be anti-freedom as someone is FORCED into providing wages, housing, education, etc.

I want people to be free from poverty as well – and the best way to do that is to give them power over their own destiny. That means setting them free from the oppressors (government, big business, Israelis, whoever you see as an "oppressor"). The best bulwark against all three is a STRONG set of laws that protect PRIVATE property rights. Then the oppressors are disarmed because they cannot take away what you have or your right to get more and keep it, too!

There should be rules, but the rules should be outcome NEUTRAL – just to make sure that those rights are not violated – i.e. we delegate our right to use retaliatory force to an independent, objective, third party that we call government.

The battle we have to fight is the battle between individualism and collectivism. The collectivist states would be our doom precisely for due to the philosophy they embrace, not in spite of it.