JusticeBDone

OK, I can point to 4 dozen articles written by Jim Wallis or his staff that suggest that the government is the ultimate answer and that cutting entitlements is morally wrong.  I challenge you to find me one article where Jim or staff talks about doing something to help someone in need and invites others to join in.

If you need more "examples" I know I can find a number of them coming from Kansas.  But it may take me some time to get a link to the old blog to show the examples that I'm thinking of.

The phrase  "more entitlements equals moral rigfhtness and less entitlements equals evil and lack of justice."  comes from all the articles during the time period when the House of Representatives were trying to find a way to reduce spending.  Shortly after Paul Ryan produced a strawman for a budget there was this circle of concern asking for a hedge of protection around the "least of these".  In the end, the discussions all came down to less spending on entitlements is morally wrong and more spending is morally riight, even though more spending would lead to a increased wealth gap.

Duh,

I’ve been following this blog for a number of years and I must say that I have never read an article, or a liberal blogger on this site, talk about something the author was doing to help the poor and invite others to join.  Not once.  In, fact, when someone mentions personally helping the poor or supporting charities they are often ridiculed because the liberal bloggers assume that they must be conservatives if they are doing instead of social activating.  And when a conservative mentions helping the poor, the liberals reject the idea out of hand, if they believe the source of the idea is from a conservative.  One of the many examples is school vouchers or creating private schools to bring urban children out of poverty.

What I have seen on this blog, and consistently, is the belief that more entitlements equals moral rightness and less entitlements equals evil and lack of justice.  And this is stated even though it has been demonstrated that entitlements widen the wealth gap.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/28/entitlement_not_tax_cuts_widen_the_wealth_gap_112189.html

And I’ve never seen this blog praise rich people even though articles referenced by the writers demonstrate that America is more charitable than any other nations and that rich conservative individuals give more in total than state and federal governments.  (The only exception is that BlueDeacon recently stood up from Jim Wallis claiming that Jim may be rich but he has the heart of someone in the 99%).

So in summary, I’m not convinced that this blog has anything to do with helping the poor. 

And by the same logic, to ask the question "does God truly want a few billionaires to have more wealthy than 2 billion people who live on less than $2/day?" is riddiculus, if it was a serious question.  We know that the person who wrote that question, and all of us who are reading it, have more wealth than the 2 billion poor of the world.

The left wants to separate out the "millionaires and billionaires" so that we can feel good about our own selfish consumption and justify it by pointing to others that have even more.  I don't see this as a Biblical position.

No one has said that poverty, as defined by the federal government, is exclusively or solely caused by personal choices.  Certainly, there are structural issues that are in play.  But Joshua's article doesn't list or discuss any. 

To understand what is going on one must first answer the question: "who are the 150 million Americans living below the line of poverty".  Nearly 30 million of that 150 million is college students.  Another large portion are wealthy people who have low incomes, on that particular year, because their income is solely dividends or capital gains from selling assets.  Many of the people in this category are retirees but a good many are not.  But the largest portion of the 150 million are what others on this blog have called "the working poor".  These people have chosen a particular career path, or have switched career paths, because they value something more than money.  All the people mentioned are in poverty at that given point in time because of their personal choices.

Now, like you said, there are some people that are in poverty because of structural issues that might even feel enslaved.  But for Joshua and other liberals to suggest that we have 150 million people in this country that fit that category is just a blatant mischaracterization of the situation. 

It is little wonder that the mainstream christian community discounts what is said by the editors of this blog.

And no one has said that the poor are being suckered into pursuing materialistic advertising that seems to define the American dream.  What I’m saying is that materialism has become such a fundamental value to liberals, including those on this blog, that they just can’t stand to see the working poor living out lives with different values than they hold dear.

In “It’s a Wonderful Life”, Bert, Ernie and Martini are working poor people that would never have a chance to own homes if it weren’t for George Bailey.  And George dreams of traveling the world and seeing things that aren’t possible for the working poor to do.  George gets an offer by Mr. Potter to become instantly rich and he turns down the offer.  At the end of the movie we are told that someone with relationships has more wealth than someone with money.  It is interesting that it is Mr. Potter that scoffs at the working poor and looks down on them.

It is my assertion that Joshua is uncomfortable with the existence of so many working poor because he can’t put aside his own materialistic values long enough to see that the working poor or most often better off than the other 50% of society that is climbing the economic ladder.

Every Christmas we watch the movie "It's a Wonderful Life".  The main character, George Bailey, raises his family in poverty even though he is offered a chance to become rich.  The villan, Mr. Potter, is clearly among the top 1%.  The point of the movie is that you aren't poor if you have friends.  In fact, it could be said that the theme of the movie is that it is preferable to be poor and make the right choices in life than to pursue economic advancement at the expense of the more important things.

I challenge you, living the life of George Bailey is not the same as having a broken arm.

Hazel, I think you are on to something.  The liberal agenda is based on wanting to isolate themselves from the poor and the problems of the poor.  And that is why they champion activism that calls for the government to solve the problem.  And that may well be why Valerie and Joshua are uncomfortable with so many in our society being classified as "poor".