I <3 him so

[ciroccoj]

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.” —Stephen Colbert

Comments

[officerjudy.livejournal.com]

pure brilliance.

[navhelowife.livejournal.com]

My FAVORITE quote by him!

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Not that I think either you or Colbert were particularly seeking my input, but...

There's a difference between helping someone and "helping" them. We're both parents. If one of your sons asks for help cleaning his room, as a loving parent, you might very well help him. It would depend, though, on the context, wouldn't it? If he's asking for help because he's overwhelmed and he's trying his hardest, you'd be in there right next to him... Unless you were trying to teach him a lesson about letting his room get to that state in the first place.

If he's asking for help and what that means is "do it for me, I want to go play," then there's no way you'd be down for that. He's trying to take advantage and not shoulder his responsibilities. If you agree to what he's asking of you, you're harming him in the long run, because there will eventually come a time when you are not there to take on his tasks for him, and he'll be unprepared for the shock of having to do things for himself.

The quote is predicated on the caricature of conservatives as robber barons, twirling their collective mustaches as they sneer about how they're going to steal a crust of bread from some poor Dickensian waif. It bothers me, because it's so facile. It solves nothing and does nothing, except perpetuate a binary view of humanity based on broad categories - they're mean hypocrites (and we're good people).

There are real questions in there. How do we define "help?" How do we define "poor?" How do we determine who genuinely needs help and who is trying to game the system by playing on the natural sympathies of good people to avoid having to face adult responsibilities? At what point can we afford to ignore those questions? Are we actually helping the people we intend to help, or are we creating a dependent subculture that is increasingly incapable of breaking out of the beneficent trap we have created for them?

Would Jesus, in fact, want you to clean your son's room for him?

[arienaru.livejournal.com]

Y'know, Jesus didn't say a damn thing about the responsibilities of the poor; he said a great deal about the responsibilities of his followers, though.

The idea that the poor are poor because they are lazy is really widespread and really extremely wrong. It's not the poor who decide to prefer absolutely no inflation over any kind of job growth as an economic choice, that taxes on the wealthy will be cut and cut again, or that it's worth spending billions to promote the idea that Randian selfishness -- somewhat worse than regular selfishness, because it comes with habits of self-delusion -- is a virtue, so *of course* public education should be abolished. (And if not abolished, cut, starved, and propagandized against.)

The overwhelming majority of the poor work like dogs, are worked like dogs, pay higher prices for everything, and have no prospect of improvement in their lot no matter how hard they work, because the law and society have been carefully set up to prevent that improvement.

We're all in this together, which is something else Jesus had something to say about.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

The idea that conservatives are interested only in helping the wealthy is really widespread and really extremely wrong.

I don't know you, and I'm not interested in arguing with a stranger online, especially on someone else's journal. If you'd like to discuss things on the basis of being two grownup human beings who shouldn't make assumptions about each other, I'm willing. If all you want is to rail against your preconceived fantasies about who I must be because of my political viewpoints, you've already done that, and we can be finished.

[arienaru.livejournal.com]

See, what you did there is say "I have no interest in facts; I want to keep this in the realm of social propriety" (with a heavy side of "you wouldn't want people to think you are _unreasonable_, would you?).

In the last 30 years, ever time conservatives have had political power in the Anglosphere, they have: increased the regressiveness of taxation; cut social programs; increased military spending; supported authoritarian responses to social problems; damaged public education; removed regulation of the environment; removed regulation of monopolistic or cartelized sectors of the economy, such as telecoms or banks; preferred economic policies afflicted with counter-factual notions such as "money is a thing" and "government spending can have no positive economic effects"; attempted to remove any and all labour rights, to things like collective bargaining or stable pensions.

All of those things damage the general prosperity; this is predictable from theory and measurable from the results, and conservatives keep advocating those things, keep doing those things, and keep insisting those things will have good results that they never have had.

What those things _do_ accomplish is to secure the stability of existing great wealth.

So if you label yourself as a conservative, you're siding with those policies.

When you label yourself a conservative while promulgating a peculiarly authoritarian -- the poor are not people over whom private citizens have authority, such as their children; it's not a hierarchy where being poor automatically puts you in a subordinate position -- parable about hypothesized failures of responsibility in response to a post that notes (correctly) that you can't say you're a good Christian *and* that you don't want to help the poor, you're siding with those policies in an involved and conscious way.

But, hey, if you want to focus on responsibility -- a just assignment of responsibility requires a commensurate authority, so you are actually capable of fulfilling the responsibility you've been assigned. (Much as making someone responsible, by their lonesome, for removing refuse from the city streets of Ottawa is an obvious injustice; to be able to do that, you need a staff and a budget and various kinds of municipal authority. So if you hand someone that responsibility without the authority to spend, hire, and make necessary rules, you are treating them unjustly. Moreover, you almost certainly are aware that this is what you are doing.)

Poverty greatly reduces your authority; you have, via our great general rationing system of prices, very little room to do anything at all. (via our social support programs, all of which are designed to guarantee you have no ability to accumulate any kind of surplus whatsoever.) So to say the impoverished should be more responsible means, if you wish to say this justly, that you wish to increase their authority over their own lives.

Which generally means providing them with money or stuff.

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

See, what you did there is say "I have no interest in facts; I want my pre-existing ideology confirmed in an endless echo chamber."

Since that was my initial assumption, and I was saying that you should examine your assumptions, I didn't want to be a hypocrite by dismissing you out of hand. Since you're happy as you are, and I'm happy as I am, I suppose we'll both go on our merry ways, with the warm glow of having met The Other and had her be just as we expected.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Wow, neglect to log in for a couple of days and look what happens on your lj...

arienaru, I agreed with just about everything you said, and would probably have said most of it myself it I'd had screentime this weekend. mynuet, I'm sure you would've expected no less from me, seeing as how we both know one another's points of view wrt a lot of this stuff ;)

I do usually try to not paraphrase what people are saying in a way that makes them sound foolish, or denigrate their political point of view, particularly when I don't know them. mynuet has made many comments on this lj, and I welcome them, even as I (usually) vehemently disagree with them. I'm not sure her response to my post merited the response it got. arienaru, if you did not mean to sound dismissive and contemptuous, I sincerely apologize for reading your comment that way. If you did mean it that way, then I thank you for your thoughtful, heartfelt comments, but would appreciate it if you put it a little more tactfully next time. At least on this lj.



There was one other thing that I wanted to say in response to mynuet's "how do we define 'help' and 'poor'" comment. I have heard this put forth in the past, and it sounds reasonable to me. And I do believe that a lot of conservatives genuinely do believe that that's what it's all about, and are quite willing to give, and give big, to help those who really need it. Schools for poor children, clinics in poor neighbourhoods, job training programs, even help for drug addicts and ex-cons who want to change their lives. But from what I've seen, a lot of conservatives merely mouth the words and then use them as an excuse to not help their fellow citizens, deserving or not. I can understand not wanting to shell out welfare checks to folks who seem allergic to work for no good reason - I don't approve, but I understand it. But I don't understand how cutting funding to public schools or battered women's shelters makes us more "responsible" as a society. I don't understand how cutting funding for special ed kids, but not cutting corporate tax breaks, isn't lacking in compassion.

I think it may come down to percentages. My feeling is that we have different views of how many people are "good" in either camp. You think a lot of conservatives genuinely are willing to help the "deserving" poor, and that there are "deserving" poor, but a lot of poor people really are just out to use the system to avoid responsibilities. I think most poor people really are responsible and not out to scam the system, and that there are compassionate conservatives, but a lot of conservatives really are just out to avoid shelling out money to help people they don't know, deserving or not.

Does that make any sense, or am I talking out my ear?

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how cutting funding for special ed kids, but not cutting corporate tax breaks, isn't lacking in compassion.

Well, and you know for me in particular, that's the kind of thing that'll have me seeing red. There's no money for parapros, but there's enough for a $50,000 conference table at the Board of Ed building? Yeah, okay. Where do I sign up to storm the Bastille?

The equal and opposite response from the conservative side to the claim that conservatives use "self reliance" as an excuse to avoid having to practice compassion is that liberals use "the government will handle it" for the same. I think both have a basis in truth, but only for some people - who would be selfish regardless of ideology or excuses. For the most past, I believe that people on both sides of the political spectrum would genuinely like to help their fellow man.

A lot of my stance on welfare and the social safety net is just from seeing how thoroughly broken it is, at least here in the US. Having experienced the welfare system directly, both by receiving benefits and being rejected for them, I can say categorically that the bureaucracy is set up to actively provide disincentives for people to try to help themselves.

I think there's not that much difference in our viewpoints in terms of "the government should provide help to those who need it; making sure none of our citizens starve is a public good and a valid use of taxpayer funds." It really does come down to an ongoing debate about execution, which can't progress if both sides retreat to their bunkers to lob talking point grenades at each other.

[daf9.livejournal.com]

It really does come down to an ongoing debate about execution, which can't progress if both sides retreat to their bunkers to lob talking point grenades at each other.

While I think my own political views are far closer to ciroccoj's than to yours, I agree with this particular comment 100%.