(formerly LindaLou)
Hi to everyone, I've been reading here and there but not posting because I am going to night school -- lots and lots of reading to do. But some of the comments in this topic truly beggar belief.
Faith, there's a book I've taught many times called Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. (He also wrote The Grapes of Wrath.) Steinbeck was in California during the Great Depression and saw how people were living. In 1930s America there were few welfare programmes. If you didn't find work, you lost your home and faced starvation. Migrant workers like George and Lennie in the book had no friends, no family, and moved from place to place in order to do back-breaking physical labour for very little money. Candy, an old man on the ranch, had been maimed in an accident and was working as a cleaner, but his ability to do even the smallest job in the ranch was fading with age. His biggest fear was that he would be fired any day, and would then be begging on the streets. These may be characters in a fictional book, but they were based on the social reality of that time.
So what, Linda Lou Kitsune? I haven't denied that there has been social injustice in this country. And there still is for that matter. In places you might not think to look. And I haven't said we shouldn't try to do something about it either.
No rich Americans were giving to the poor in the sense you seem to wistfully wish they would, nor are they doing so now, nor will they.
Did you read what I wrote? I believe I SAID it would be good IF conservatives had obeyed scripture that exhorts us to take care of the poor, even tells us the whole reason we are to make money is to help others, and that we are probably now in the position of having the government take over our lives because this wasn't done. If I didn't get that said clearly I'm sorry, I'm saying it now. The people who have all the money aren't necessarily conservatives, however.
With the exception of a few philanthropists, people who get wealthy in our society do not tend to be kind-hearted, empathic people who have the benefit of their fellow humans at heart.
Does that give others license to steal from them? Are you just naturally a better person than they? So much self-righteousness around here.
More of a general (though not universal) rule is that the higher up the boss, the more of a greedy, hard-hearted b*stard he or she is. Socialism exists to force people like this to contribute to society because they won't do it willingly.
They pay beaucoup taxes already, m'dear, at an outrageous percentage. But you want to bleed them dry, right? Nobody has a RIGHT to be rich, right? Doesn't matter how they got it, if they worked their butt off for it or however. And right, you just stated a universal rule there about the more evil they get the higher up they go. And as so many here say to me, your evidence for that is????
Where's the greed in this scenario? I think it's in the people who want to steal the money from the rich myself. Oooo, all that money. WE should have it, not those mean bastards, but us us us nice people who aren't rich.
It would be good if we all had a concern for the poor and for each other. Wish it were so. But I'm not going to condemn people for sins that I know are also in me. And if we aren't doing anything to correct social injustices that way we do need some kind of system to do it. But letting the government take over all our money and dispense it according to their own sinful and power-hungry --- and greedy ---- perspectives is not my idea of the right solution.
I would also question this statement,
earning it fairly and squarely and getting rich by it is not greed.
Are you telling me that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett work harder than the person with a day job at Wal-mart and a cleaning job at night who struggles to support their family on minimum wage?
Did I say that? Did I name names? Why do you pick on the very richest? There are many rich people in the world.
I SAID IT'S NOT GREED. I'll say it again: It's not greed any more than the greed of the janitor at Wal-mart who puts money on a lottery ticket. Greed is no respector of persons. The subject is GREED.
Which of these has earned all their money "fairly and squarely"?
All of the above for all I know.
And what sort of support do you think there should be for someone who has lost their job through no fault of their own and cannot find another one -- is that just their tough luck, because to help them through tax money is "stealing" from people who work?
I really think people here have a reading problem. I haven't said I delight in anyone's misfortune, quite the opposite, but you persist in projecting it on me. The subject is HOW we deal with these things I believe, not WHETHER we should deal with them.
I also put unemployment in the category that people themselves pay into which is different from welfare. You didn't read that either, did you?
Also, I'm not proposing we do away with any of the current aids to people because there is nothing at the moment to replace them. I'm trying to have a general discussion about the BEST means of dealing with these problems. Taking from people to give to others IS stealing. Maybe you prefer that to leaving people to struggle with their misfortunes on their own and maybe I prefer it too under the current circumstances -- that doesn't change the general principle that it IS stealing to take the help from someone else against their will.
Like others here, I am also wondering if you will say anything about the quotations presented by Horowitz. He's clearly racist, yet you seem to be holding him up as a shining example of . . . something. Do you condone his beliefs?
There is something so disgustingly low about the way people these days fling around the epithet "racist" it curdles my blood. It's ridiculous to call Horowitz a racist. You've all bought the leftist campaign to destroy a man who had the chutzpah to leave them behind in his search for justice in this world.
Horowitz grew up working for the poor as a Communist, and put his energies as a radical in the Sixties into helping the Black Panthers. It was their turning out to be murdering criminal thugs that turned him against the radical movement. He's never been a racist, wouldn't know how to be a racist.
He has mixed race grandchildren. Get some charity toward your fellow human beings. The left is not known for it, they just want to destroy anyone they disagree with, but try it sometime.
I have no idea what the status of that out-of-context quotation is, whether it would hold up in any sense whatever if I knew Horowitz's side of the story, but I'd also point out that endorsing a person's point of view doesn't necessarily mean you endorse all of it. Who do you all think you are condemning another human being who is working his ass off to improve things in this world probably a lot harder than most of you?
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