I've been away a bit and haven't kept up with your daily postings. Good stuff! But I feel I must comment on your post of 8-15 suggesting that it is bad for the government to help. Of course your quote from former President Reagan speaks volumes, capturing as it does the whole neo-con view, which you obviously promote here, and it's claim that it is somehow bad for the government to help people. Or, that "helping" equals taking from your wallet (stealing, is it?) Well. I suppose you presume that the "you" is an upper middle class reader, who doesn't believe in allowing the government to do justice, help the poor, build roads, pay teachers, enforce EPA guidelines, prosecute criminals, fund research on public health, wage wars, and all the other good stuff government sometimes does (and sometimes does well). Are there really people out there that don't appreciate the proper use of legitimate taxes?
If one, however, believes that it is a good thing, in principle, that the government administers funds for the public good (a proposition I have previous maintained in this column to be a Biblical one) then this assumption of Reagan and Cleary that the government is stealing from your wallet, and you'd better look out, is cyncial and just dead wrong. I think you should renounce this odd claim. (And, while your at it, renounce the cheesy partisan dig, as if to imply that the Bush administration doesn't want to help anybody. Was it wrong for him to fly to Florida yesterday to offer help to the storm victims there? Doesn't he claim to want to help the people of Iraq?)
And, further, if the reader is actually one who has been seriously helped--beyond the common assistance of good school books, nice roads, safe traffic lights, well-trained police, pure water (more or less) and due process when necessary--of the reader really is economically poor, and has received food stamps, then the claim is worse than theoretically inadequate, it is offensive.
You are a man that desires to love neighbor and you want our public order to be normed by justice. Why this regular gripping about taxes and government? Are you really opposed to food stamps, a verifiably helpful and cost-effective government aid program? Do you think that the government ought not to be involved in any disaster relief? Can you imagine how those below the poverty line hoping for a small assistance grant for job training or allowance for heat take your attack?
I'd say, pick on somebody your own size, and let the children who are forced to live below poverty line alone. Let the handicapped elderly alone; stopping complaining about our modest help to the emaciated in the third world. Because, finally, that is who this "priceless" critique is aimed at. I sincerely ask you to reconsider.
I'll post an apologia tonight.