Can the poor afford corned beef, Irish whiskey and the gasoline to go get it on food stamps? After all, they had to give up green Le Sueur brand peas for generic many Saint Patricks Days ago.
As delightful a world without snakes and other reptiles may be, Patrick has been honored as the patron saint of Ireland since at least the seventh century for driving out polytheism from the Emerald Isle with a three-leaved shamrock symbolizing the Holy Trinity.
A Roman Briton sold into Irish slavery at age 16 before his escape six years later, he returned as a missionary in A.D. 432 to what Winston Churchill in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples described as:
to the wild regions which he had acquitted. His success was speedy and undying. He organised the Christianity already in existence; he converted kingdoms which were still pagan, especially in the West; he brought Ireland into connection with the Church of Western Europe, and made it formally part of universal Christendom.
So what has this to do with the price of peas and petrol in Peoria and the rest of America? Plenty, and one aspect of why is exemplified by how lauded has been Pope Francis as “caring for the poor,” since his election as the first successor of St. Peter from the Americas as the rock upon which the Roman Catholic Church was built.
This Southern Baptist and The Pope are, first and foremost, Christians whose Holy Scripture admonishes us throughout to care for the poor. That Holy Bible begins by separating men and women created in his image that worship the Creator from pagan polytheists that worship the creation. Bowing down to fatted calves led the Chosen to 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. We can only hope that the last four years of wandering while the Democratic Party sacrifices coal and oil to their Man-made Global Warming/Climate Change idol is interrupted as quickly as St. Patrick converted the heathen upon his return to Ireland.
Pope Francis, throughout his life in Argentina, famously rejected the siren song of the “Liberation Theology” heresy upon whose rocks so many Christian hopes for the poor have crashed since its inception in Latin America in the 1950s. Heresy, you say? Yes, because that religious movement, much like its so-called “social justice” political spin-off embraced by the Democratic Party since at least the late 1960s, is based upon the deadly sin of envy. Caring for the poor was translated into stealing from the rich in order that the thieves could claim virtue as they “gave” the wealth of others to the poor and, significantly, to government bureaucrats to manage the “giving.”
Of course, the prospect of having one’s hard-earned wealth taken away discourages the hard work necessary to create it in the first place, and that takes us to an even more fundamental aspect of how the Christianity St. Patrick bequeathed to the West has been fundamental to our having enough wealth for modern day liberal Democrats to spread around to begin with. Only in a culture that values the individual and, significantly, his right to the fruits of his labor, does 5000 years of history show that such wealth will be created by and for so many. Only with Ten Commandments Rule of Law, turn the other cheek tolerance and self government by a moral people did it reach its penultimate manifestation in Europe, and then its American apogee via We the People.
Pope Francis was punished by the Argentine Powers that Be when he stood up against euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage. That papal lover of Liberty who stood up against communism, Pope John Paul II, made him Arch Bishop soon after the white smoke announcing his election wafted above Vatican City.
Do liberal Democrats care about the poor?
Do they search for policies that will cause there to be less people in poverty while also providing sustenance to those presently poor? Or do they care more about being seen as caring for the poor via their support for policies favored by the power hungry whose favorable opinions they crave?
From whence do policies that raise the price of the source of the greatest reduction in poverty in world history come from, but from an incoherent “care” for the planet, possibly masking a greed for government power? I speak of coal and oil of course. Is it compassionate towards the poor to exalt the endangerment of a species of rat over the creation of jobs that will lift those created in God’s image from poverty?
President Barack Obama instructed all federal agencies last week to factor in the effect of climate change when deciding whether to approve construction projects. It wasn’t enough for liberal Democrats and majorities of the American people to clean up the air and water in the 1970s. The continuation of their power requires new bogeymen. Hence, the imagined threat to Arctic polar bears from an oil pipeline to justify three years and counting of an environmental impact “study” (some government bureaucrats got salaries at least?), and the demonizing of your SUV.
But if a liberal Democrat hasn’t a supposed crisis, whether environmental or otherwise, handy, there is always the sin of envy to fall back on. Hence the never-ending demand that the so-called rich pay more and more in taxes. Its sad that envy can’t be eaten and digested, but after all, the sources of beef to be corned emit dangerous climate change gases. Can’t power a car to get to work with a solar panel or windmill? Then move within walking distance of light rail that takes you to the food stamp office.
Christians introduced caring for the poor into humanity’s ethos. Christians founded universities that teach science and base their reason on Natural Law. The free market that made America exceptional sprung in large part from the freedom God intended for individual Man.
The conservatives among us tire of being lectured to that caring for the poor is defined by ever more and bigger government and its minders that talk about caring for the poor, rather than producing the results of conservative policies grounded in Creator-ordained Liberty that have been proven time and time again to reduce the numbers of the poor and provide the excess wealth to sustain the poor that remain. Hopefully two and four years from now enough Americans will have so tired of eating envy, instead of beef, that they will remove the Democrats from power who are sustained by its fomentation.
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
