Republicans: still conservatives or just theo-fascists?

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The poor will work if they get a chance to work, but society can't punish people for a shortage of jobs. If people have no legal options to make a living, they will indeed become desperate and "misbehave". But that's only a protection racket in the alternate universe that conservatives appear to live in.

"Theo-Nazi" also has a nice ring to it!

I had not intended to contradict myself, but it came out that way, I guess.
Though threatening violence against people who have nothing to lose isn't much of a cure all for poverty. Giving them a hand up, and providing jobs is more of a magic bullet for the whole problem.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

First, it would be: "Give me money, or they will become desperate, mostly amongst themselves, maybe against others." I am quite certain criminality has more consequence on poor people.

I prefer to stay empirical. Does this "protection racket" work? Does providing social programs help prevent criminality and the problems arising from poverty? All the evidence I have seen says "yes". Does the death penalty work? I have seen more proof to the contrary, even when I thought it did. Besides, I have read that, in the USA, it is more costly than life without parole, which is more costly than charity.

To my knowledge, the only era in which care for the poor was mostly effectively provided through charity, and without taxation and outside the state, was in the Middle Ages; but that needs very loose definitions of all terms. Then, it was the Church that took care of these matters, and it did receive free gifts from devoted lords and burghers, though it also collected the tithe. Even though it wasn't "the state" (well, outside Lazio, Umbria and Romagna at least), it still was an otherwise powerful (and centralized, starting with the 12th century) organization. Also, in that distant time, being poor was a sign of devotion to the Christ, not a proof of one's failure to be rich; both are false, obviously, but the first is closer to truth in limited cases, and was much more useful. If you are so keen with the Scriptures...

Hand UP not Hand OUT. Helping the helpless may be a virtue, but helping the clueless is always a vice.

ruveyn

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

The way we do it is to give the man fish for a lifetime at the expense of the unwilling taxpayer.

Indeed.

Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day. Let him starve to death and you can forget all about him tomorrow.

ruveyn

Then I take it you would support free tuition on post-secondary education?

The notion that all taxpayers who support programs that help the down and out, and the handicapped is just another Republican myth. Plenty of Americans realize they have a responsibility to care for those who are without. If anything, this is a right wing example of class warfare.
And...
You can teach a man to fish all you want. It doesn't amount to anything if employers aren't willing to hire him. And please don't tell me he can go into business himself - that's almost impossible these days for poor people to get help with financing.
On second thought, it might work, if Republicans get past the idea that the government has no right to tell businesses who and when to hire.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Tell that to Oprah Winfrey of J.K. Rowlings. They started out as women on the dole.

ruveyn

Sorry to open a can of worms here possibly, but do Germans see the GOP as similar to the Nazis?

That was an interesting article, thank you. I feel better for reading it.

Thank you.

Instead the far right seems willing to vilify anyone who has been out of work for an extended period of time. It's amazing to me that the far right accepts this as truth in the face of the unemployment crisis of the past few years.

Many people who are still out of work had good, long term jobs before they lost them in this recession/depression (I know a few personally) and I also know a few people who have/had their own companies that are really hurting.

I don't know much about Oprah's history, but JK Rowling is obviously an exceptional writer (which, by the way, is very different to going into business--it doesn't require her to take out a loan). It is downright stupid to expect everyone to be able to do something like that. The "rags to riches" stories that we hear about are very rare exceptions to the rule--and in this case it is due to a great talent, which very few people possess. Furthermore, to be able to sustain herself while she wrote Harry Potter she relied on the British welfare system which even post-Thatcher is a lot more generous than the American one.

Also, JK Rowling is a big supporter of welfare programs and public health care. She criticized Tony Blair as being too far to the right, and praised both Obama and Hilary Clinton. Not the best person that you could have chosen to make your point.

What AstroGeek said.
On top of that, plenty of conservatives attack J.K. Rowlings supposedly because her books promote witchcraft, and thus Satanism. I suspect the real reason is, the conservatives who claim to love upward mobility so much actually despise this woman because she had once depended on welfare.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I wouldn't go that far. I'd rather compare them to Middle Eastern authoritarians who promote religion, seek to oppress women through restrictive social policies, and call for religiously motivated wars. An example for the latter is Bush's phone call to a shocked and puzzled Jacques Chirac, in which he pointed at biblical prophecies and claimed that Iraq had to be invaded because Gog and Magog, two agents of the apocalypse, were at large in the Middle East. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so scary.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... eorge-bush

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.ph ... aught_29_5

This is why religious leaders who oppose the separation of church and state are unelectable.

People on this forum have asked me before why I'm do down on evangelicals and their end times theology. Well, this is exactly why. It's their literal interpenetration of Revelations that will prove to be a powder keg in such a dangerous place as the modern Middle East.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer