Flaming liberal

I got a political season forwarded email from my brother today and it got me a-thinking. The email made a great argumentative analogy using the folk wisdom (which I am all about) of the Aesop fable the Ant and the Grasshopper. The liberal "spread the wealth" philosophy was criticized as punishing the industrious and and rewarding the lazy grasshopper in our society.

I remembered Hilary and I (My views do not represent hers) had recently watched this cartoon from my youth back in the late 1900s:



Watch it--It's good. Note the ending, which departs from the age-old Aesop's fable's usual ending where the lazy grasshopper is kicked out into the winter (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper). I think the Disney happy ending represents well one of the main rationales behind the bleeding heart liberal plan to help poor people: maybe if we give them a hand up now, they can contribute to society a little later on. Consider for example a student grant (or subsidized loan, like the ones I have used). Hopefully the students using them will be able to pay back by contributing to society (and to the tax base that can subsidize others who want to get an education or stay out of the almost inescapable hole of poverty). This, of course, is an easy example to base my argument on. Other welfare programs, though more fraught with abuse and loopholes, use this as a supporting rationale.

You all know me and how I love to debate. By no means do I want to create a spirit of contention. Nor do I mean to make an overt liberal argument--just a rumination. Thank goodness for the grasshopper that he could fiddle. There are lots of people who can't give back in any way and can't play any sort of figurative fiddle for society, that's for sure. Are we still motivated to help them if they're helpless? Then there are lots of people (but not all) who won't end up giving back because they're lazy. How do we distinguish between them? It's not easy to draw that line. The government tries to, believe it or not. And much of this trying, ironically, is thanks to Bill Clinton's welfare reform. There are definitely other ways to interpret the grasshopper cartoon--the tobacco product placement model--the insects are people too, and should not be eaten view--and the "I can find secret phallic symbols in any Disney cartoon" approach.

Andy Jorgensen