Now. I’m not steeped in knowledge of all the ideas of that dude from long ago. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t advocate that those with all the fish and fishing skills and access to tackle and bait and line and boats and boat-dock ramps and the most well-stocked fishing ponds and fish-gutting tools, turn their greedy, self-centered noses up at those without. Nor do I believe he advocated that the former work tirelessly, unscrupulously, purposefully (and as we’ve learned in recent months, sometimes illegally) to prevent those without access from the possibility of ever having any. But I guess we see what we want to see.

You know, not everybody who needs help is a lazy free-loader (new data show increasing numbers of middle class people lining up for the assistance you’re so incensed about giving). In fact, such a view is arrogant and cynical and, I would argue, largely antithetical to what the long ago dude believed. If he were alive today (if he was ever even alive in the first place), I think he’d be sick to his stomach to see how our society treats the least among us. Moreover, I think he’d be appalled at how his followers—by and large—twist things he is purported to have said, to best suit their own ideology and advancement, while at the same time oppressing their fellow humans.

Did you know that Gov. Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto to cut funding to California’s 94 Domestic Violence Shelters for women? Yes. He did. So that a woman who was beaten in the head with a hammer, repeatedly, and then stabbed in the face with a fork by her husband will have to find someplace else to hide herself and her children from her abuser while she tries to get on her feet. Now. I am fortunate that I will never have to use the services of just such a place. But I am not so lacking in compassion and an ability to put myself in the shoes of another, that I would be angry about some of my tax dollars being used for the operation of this shelter.

So forgive me for thinking that your note about the long ago dude and his fish seems severely simplistic and terrifically callous.

http://www.blogher.com/faculty-self-interest-trumps-collegiality-university-california