Evans Liberal Politics, April 18, 2012, by Paul Evans:

I have been a Democrat all my life. My father, and his father before him, perhaps because both men served in WWII, considered themselves New Deal Democrats and followed the ideas of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I grew up mostly politically unaware, and was a late initiate to the world of politics. All I knew growing up was that my father watched the world news most weeknights at 6:30 p.m., and sometimes would invite me to watch with him, although at that time I did not find the subject matter all that exciting.

I did somewhat follow the Vietnam war, and once had to give a speech about it at Jr. high school. I saw the TV coverage where our last servicemen and political operatives were taken off of the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon by helicopters. The city fell to North Vietnamese Communist forces and our time in that war was over. I remember that at the time, there was much talk of a “Domino Theory,” whereby if South Vietnam fell to the Communists, all of Southeast Asia would follow suit. That was the hawks’ line back then.

(I guess I must be getting older to have digressed like this. I believe my young housemates think I drive like a “grandpa,” anyway. I’m old enough that I should be one.)

On January 25, 2010 I published Open Thread for Night Owls and Other Strays, a Daily Kos article (and ongoing series), in this case mainly written by Meteor Blades. The main thrust of the article was a discussion of South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer’s comment comparing people receiving government assistance (such as myself) to “feeding stray animals.” He was then running for the Republican nomination to become Governor and said that the needy "owe something back" for the aid they receive. Meteor Blades quoted Bauer:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said.

Of course, this incensed the Daily Kos community, and Meteor Blades said: "It’s also considered culturally acceptable to euthanize suffering animals, so maybe that’s Bauer’s next idea for ‘helping’ poor people. South Carolina can call the death chambers ‘Grandma Bauer’s Self-Sufficiency Ranch.’"

This is the sort of vitriol that exists between staunch fiscal and Tea Party sorts of conservatives on the one hand, and liberals and progressives on the other. It is a question of attitudes which hardened, chronologically, as Congress became a bitter place where bipartisanship essentially disappeared. At the conclusion of the article, I said:

I would have to agree that Bauer is scraping the bottom of the barrel, however: this man, whatever he calls himself, is no compassionate conservative. Many of my neighbors ARE compassionate conservatives. Just because you are fiscally conservative and would prefer, for instance, to arrange assistance for the poor by means of private and church sources, or because you place such a strong emphasis on living a personally conservative lifestyle and want the society you live in to reflect those personal values, by no means indicates that you cannot be both a conservative and compassionate. I (personally) know several people who are. As for Bauer, after this, I don’t think he’s much of a threat to be elected as South Carolina’s governor, at least, I certainly hope not.

Many of you may remember the big scandal over Bauer’s disappearance and South American sexual affair. See Wikipedia, in it’s biographical aritlce on Bauer, here. Bauer didn’t get much further after that.

But this has been an ongoing theme among right wingers. As you might expect, Rush Limbaugh has chimed in. See Rush: Welfare Recipients Akin to Wild Animals Dependent on People for Food, Daily Kos, April 4, 2012, by Black Max. Limbaugh wasn’t even original. I wonder who he cited as the source of “his idea.” Maybe it came up for discussion with one of his erudite callers. Also, be sure and watch the YouTube video from March 18, 2012 Mary Franson (R) compares people on food stamps to wild animals. So this sort of thing has been an ongoing commentary and talking point among Republicans.

Is this compassionate conservatism? How about the recent push, at least in part funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, at the state level, to take away collective bargaining rights for teachers, firemen and policemen — who are ordinary working folk, but working and paying their own way in life? Is that “compassionate” or in any decent way fair? These workers dedicate their lives to society! Yet the right wing media, led by Fox News and people like Rush Limbaugh, have convinced decent, church-going, basically good-hearted Americans everywhere that people on welfare are shiftless, lazy bums and must be forced off of the rolls.

I myself am on full disability for mental illness. Despite my strong preference to remain silent about this, I recently spoke about the whole subject. In Thoughts About God Part 2: Related Political Ramblings, (Evans Liberal Politics, April 10, 2012, by Paul Evans, subtitled “Looking Back at the Last Two Presidents, And Speaking on the Intersection of Politics and Religion”), I described my own experience trying to get back into the workforce:

If you want people to get off of welfare and food stamps, etc., the fact is, there are no real programs that really, actually help that. (Yes, there is the Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation, but if you ARE on disability, are you going to drop that in order to sweep floors or wash dishes, in the process losing your medical coverage?)

I am on full disability for mental illness. Last year I tried to work my way out of that, and succeeded at getting a part time job, 20 hours a week designing websites and doing cold call telemarketing to get more work. Immediately, after a safe earning of $65 a month, I think it was, half of what I made was deducted from my SSI, my food stamps were cut almost in half, which hurt all three of us living here, and I was given a medical spend down. In what way is that providing a hand up out of poverty? What incentive was there for me to keep working? By the way, the three of us living here have been trying to get by on about $8,000 a year plus food stamps. That’s really living the life of Riley, I can assure you.

The point is NOT that I have been mentally unstable in fact, and have been advised not to work full time and drop my disability. Regardless of that, I was determined to get to work, but there was no path for me to get there. So how are those on disability or welfare who in fact may want a way out, to blame, and why are conservatives so sure that we are all “lazy” and must be forced off of welfare? This is bullsh*t.

My housemate has degenerative joint disease. He can’t make his elbows straighten out, and he essentially has no cartilage left in his knees. He also has neurological problems. He has applied for disability twice and twice been turned down. It’s a racket. The lawyers get to apply for you, and they string out the process for years, and they take a cut, but it works now that most people have to apply three times before you have a real chance at getting disability. And then they lawyers take their cut. And I really didn’t want to “spill my guts” about all this, either.

I am really trying to get any conservative reader who may read this to, just maybe, “get it.” Coming towards the conclusion of that article, I said:

To finish this overall line of argumentation, it is not only up to God to care for His people, nor just the churches. He expects all of us – including the government and our leaders — to do what we can do help those less fortunate than ourselves without judgment and even to the limit of our abilities. Again, Jesus enjoined (three times) before He ascended into heaven, that he expected Peter and the church to “feed my (His) sheep.” That’s not hard to understand, should not be twisted into anything ”only spiritual” in its direction, and is central in my beliefs.

Another idea which has been formative for me is the First Principle of Unitarian-Universalism, which is “the inherent worth and dignity of every human being.” In this regard, remember that Jesus refused no one help in his ministry on earth, including the Samaritan woman, with whom Jews were not supposed to have any contact, and Cornelius the Roman Centurion, who was a pagan Roman soldier and as such an enemy of the Jewish people. In other words, He did not judge the individual in need, just as He told His people to be very careful about making any judgments of others. In His life on earth, Jesus only offered up only His caring love, advice, healing and help, and then His life itself.

To me, it should not matter whether you approach the question of poverty and entitlements, etc., from a Christian perspective or simply as caring, patriotic Americans. I have never, and I will never, understand how the rich can drive through the poorer sections of our major cities and not be moved by compassion to try to change things for the better. It seems as though so many people have the idea of themselves as Christian or righteous before God, yet they ignore all this suffering around them, and I cannot understand how they do it, except that somehow, perhaps, it never even crosses their minds that what they see around them is unacceptable to God. If you are a caring person, as Martin Luther King said, you must realize (to paraphrase) that where injustice remains for one of us, none of us are truly free.

…

The basis of my … political discussion here lies with the Gospels and the Book of Acts, with the concept of Logos, with my discussions with quite a few pastors and priests, and with my reading over at least 33 years. It also lies with my own experience in life mingling with ordinary citizens, of whom I am certainly one, and experiencing their suffering, their hopes, and their dreams, which often only include carrying on in life and reaching their reward when they are done.

Life has often been referred to as “this veil of tears.” I do not think that in times which may well grow increasingly more difficult, as even a CIA warning to the President indicates, we can expect too much of an overall, rapid betterment of the economy and any sort of immediate, “happy” times in the near future. For those of us who are Christian, it may well be wise to be content with what we have, to realize how hard is America’s place in the world for the future, and to see that all of us need to realize how lucky we are to be Americans.

At the same time, the exclusive power and riches of the wealthy and its continued concentration in the ways occurring now are just wrong for America. We are – all of us – the only people who can change that. And we are the only people who can truly make this a Christian nation in the best sense of the word, while accepting people of all faiths, beliefs and value systems as our equals before God, in love. Again, the Bible teaches us that “none are righteous, not one,” and Jesus enjoined us to love our neighbor as ourselves – all of our neighbors.