The helpless

Kristi and I had my father-in-law over for Friday night and portion of Saturday. He was recovering from some minor surgery.

A partisan Democrat his entire life, Dave’s bitter dislike of Republicans and the enduring comfort he has with the idea that no matter what the problem is, more government is the best solution reared its head again yesterday.

It does not seem to matter how many times we resist the bait to argue with him he can’t help but toss out a barb with some bait on it. Yesterday it began when he said he could not imagine the “fourteen pygmies” visiting Alamogordo. Confused we asked him what he was talking about. He alluded to the fourteen announced candidates seeking the GOP nomination for president.

Like a movie that comes on TV that I have already seen and know to be poorly written and poorly thought out, I realized this story was back on again and I could not simply change the channel. So I took the lure as my cue to exit the room and do a few of my chores in the back of the house.

Well, later yesterday Kristi admitted after I walked out she took the bait. She said eventually when prompted by her father, she explained to him that she was a card carrying libertarian who wanted an end to big government interfering in so many aspects of her life.

Eventually, she said, Dave did what every Democrat does when questioned about the wisdom of thinking more government is the solution to every problem. He asked Kristi about what her duty was to help the helpless in society.

Of course there is always plenty more going on right under the surface anytime a Democrat throws out a question about the helpless. First, they think before America began this long march toward an ever bigger government, the helpless never got any help. Second, Democrats always imply that if you do not support more and more government, you don’t care about the helpless. Or if you do care a little, you certainly don’t care as much as they do. They do this because "compassion" is a badge of self-congratulatory pride that every Democrat feels entitled to wear. And they point to it directly or indirectly every time someone questions whether more and more government authority over all aspects of our lives is wise. At their core they want non-Democrats to feel morally inferior due what they Democrats see as a serious lack of compassion for the helpless.

A basic statistic about American society tells you all you need to know about how far proponents of big government (Democrats) will go to make government even bigger and then more big. You would get little argument from those who brag about their deep sense of compassion (Democrats) that a basic responsibility of the non-helpless would be to contribute the pool of resources used to help the helpless.

Actually, you could not get much of a debate started on this point with Republicans either. Everyone I know of, Democrat and Republican alike, thinks that helping the helpless should be the duty of every citizen who is not helpless. This explains why American is the most charitable nation on earth. Oh by the way, studies also show repeatedly that Republican voters give larger percentages of their income to charity than Democrats.

So everyone agrees that we all need to help the helpless right? Not really. Things get tricky now. It seems that when you take a look at the actual cash receipts flowing into the pool of resources (the federal budget) that go to help the helpless, almost ½ the entire nation gets a pass. One half of all American adults pay nothing into the sacred pot that is used to help the helpless. In a sense, since ½ of the citizens in our country are not assigned any role in helping the helpless at all; in the eyes of Democrats 1/2 of all Americans are deemed to be too helpless themselves to help the helpless with even a small portion of their income. No, instead of asking everyone except the truly helpless to contribute, Democrats scream UNFAIR and call on just half the adults in the country to foot the entire bill. They also repeatedly suggest those who are already paying the entire bill should pay even more since we, according to Democrats don't do enough for the helpless.

When you think about the way pathetic shirking of duty by nearly half of all Americans is not a scandal, you realize that it is not so much "compassion" that distinguishes Democrats from all others; it is how Democrats define what a citizen’s basic duties are. And according to their overblown sense of “fairness,” it is entirely fair that 1/2 the country should get a free pass on the burden of helping the helpless.

Democrats are not really qualified to have a discussion about what reasonable public policy is with me. This explains why, once I realized who the fourteen pygmies were in the conversation yesterday, I headed off to take care of some of my household duties rather than engage.

Don't get me wrong. I believe every American has the right to freedom of speech and also the right to be wrong. However compulsory listening to twisted and convoluted bullshit is not required in the family nor is it the law of the land......yet.