Re: Workers Paradise. /Political rant.

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 11:43 PM 9/15/96, attila wrote:

>            NO, it does not need to be or do either, BUT, it means
>            that everybody independently attempts to succeed and the
>            'community' takes care of itself --and in the standard
>            sense, the ne'er do wells fall off the path of *their own
>            free choice.*  There will always be sickness and calamity,
>            but that is what the community is for.
>
>            BTW, it still works today; I live in one of 'em.

And lest there be any doubt, I _do_ support certain kinds of charities, and
will not of course stop anyone from practicing charity. While I have no
religious beliefs to speak of, I strongly support the mechanisms some
churches have for taking care of their own members, recruits from the
street, etc. (Including Salvation Army and "mission" sorts of inner city
things--note of course that most such entities also insist on prayer and/or
Bible readings as part of the deal...I wonder how long it will be before a
class action lawsuit is filed to stop the prayer part? This would
effectively shut the missions down, of course.)

The thing about _traditional_ charity, of the religious or community sort,
was that it was not treated as an "entitlement," as something the resentful
masses could "demand" as part of their "human rights." A parish priest, for
example, might extend charity to a poor person, or a widow, or whatever,
but not to an able-bodied person who simply decided to not work. Nor to an
unmarried woman who kept getting pregnant and having more mouths to feed.

(I surmise that most such women either died of diseases related to sexual
promiscuity, died in childbirth, died of disease brought on by
malnutrition, or ended up in convents (Catholic birth control).)

The point is that even in an "age of charity," strings have to be attached
by the givers of charity. People will simply not give 40-60% of what they
earn to support a growing population of people who say it's their "right"
to welfare, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), WIC (Women,
Infants, and Children), food stamps (*), and suchlike.

(At certain supermarkets I sometimes shop in on the way back to my town,
people in front of me in line put their nice cuts of meat down, their fine
loaves of bread, their frozen dinner entrees, their "Ben and Jerry's Ice
Cream," and then pay for it with books of blue "Department of Agriculture"
food stamps. They use their own cash (perhaps gotten by cashing their
welfare and "disability" checks) to buy their smokes and booze, as food
stamps are not allowed to be spent on this stuff. My impression is that
they eat more expensive food than I do, perhaps because they're buying the
food with "play money," whereas I'm buying my food with money that's what's
left after I had to pay 40-50 taxes, so I seek to economize when I can!)

>            Now, I don't intend to be Scrooge, but I'll fight for my
>            rights to cut off at the knees the knee-jerk liberals and
>            government slavemeisters who want to tell me that I, and
>            2 others are required to support 100 freeloaders.

And speaking of Scrooge, I like "A Christmas Carol" about as much as anyone
I know, and try to take the lesson of what Scrooge learned as a general
lesson about life and living it.

(As with "Robin Hood," the message is often confused. Robin Hood was not
"stealing from the rich," he was taking back what was stolen from the
peasants and farmers by the King and his tax collectors, notably the
Sheriff of Notingham. At least this is how I read the myth.)

--Tim May

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