In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Scrooge asked the two visitors to his office, "'Are there no prisons?"
"'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"'And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. ''Are they still in operation?'
"'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, 'I wish I could say they were not.'
"'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.
"'Both very busy, sir.'
"'Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very
glad to hear it.'
"'Under the impression that they scarcely
furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the
gentleman, 'a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor
some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because
it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance
rejoices. What shall I put you down for?'
"'Nothing!' Scrooge replied.
"'You wish to be anonymous?'
'''I wish to be left alone,'said Scrooge.
"'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't
make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people
merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost
enough: and those who are badly off must go there.'
"'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'
"'If they would rather die," said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
A reminder of Scrooge's indifference and insensitivity to the plight
of those less fortunate than he seems especially pertinent this
Christmas season, as the GOP members of Congress have continued their
relentless assault upon the poor and middle class in this country.
Wedded firmly to an unthinking and counter-productive belief in
austerity economics, they have insisted upon reducing the number of
impoverished American families eligible to receive to receive food
stamps and short- term nutrition programs, voted to cut back on Head
Start and other anti-poverty programs, and permitted unemployment
benefits for millions of long-term unemployed to expire on December 27,
2013.
At the same time, these highly-compensated "public
servants" - who are paid $174,000 annually but have been in session
for only 126 days this calendar year - have continued to support fiscal
and economic policies that the evidence shoes overwhelmingly benefit the
1% and further exacerbate growing economic inequality.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who was named after that infamous apostle of
selfishness, Ayn Rand, nicely illustrates the GOP's collective
worldview. In a National Review Online op ed entitled, " Is
poverty a death sentence?" (September 21, 2011), Senator Paul took issue
with the comments of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the sole socialist
serving in either branch of the United States Congress.
Senator Paul claimed that, "To the extent that poverty impacts health,
much of it can be attributed to behavioral factors. Over 30 percent of
those living below the poverty smoke, compared with 19 percent of the
rest of the population. Obesity rates are significantly higher among the
poor than the general population, an unimaginable problem for those
starving in North Korea or Somalia."
He further insisted that
"One example of how cultural factors impact health among the poor is
known as the 'Hispanic health paradox.' According to a National
Institutes of Health study, 'despite higher poverty rates, less
education, and worse access to health care, health outcomes of many
Hispanics living in the United States today are equal to, or better
than, those of non-Hispanic whites.' Researchers believe the strong
family unit in Hispanic culture, not genetics, explains the paradox."
Paul continued, "This context does not negate the fact that there are
truly needy Americans. But with a national debt of $14.3 trillion and
increasing structural deficits, we must be more precise in both how we
talk about poverty in America and whom we decide to target with scarce
federal resources.... If poverty is in any way a death sentence, it is
big government that has acted as the judge and jury - conscripting poor
Americans into a lifetime of dependence on a broken and ineffective
federal government."
Senator Paul, invoking the ghost of
Ronald Reagan, concluded that, "In the half-century since LBJ's 'War on
Poverty' began, we have spent $16 trillion to fight poverty. We now
spend over $900 billion a year on over 70 means-tested welfare programs
under 13 government agencies. Yet, thanks or no thanks to the federal
government, we now have more poverty as measured by government than we
did in the 1970s. An all-time high of 40 million Americans depend on
food stamps, and 64 million are enrolled in Medicaid. Government is the
problem, not the solution."
Missing from Senator Paul's
analysis was any recognition that obesity rates among the poor in the
United States might in any way be linked to the ubiquity of inexpensive,
starch-filed, non-nutritional junk food that politicians of his
mind-set will not allow the FDA to regulate, or that poverty in the
United States has increased dramatically in the United States precisely
because of the "Reagan revolution."
Those who do not suffer
from historical amnesia will recall that Reagan enjoyed electoral
success because he was able to successfully pander to white Southern
bigots and the fears of older voters by expressing umbrage about
"welfare queens" and "young, strapping bucks" gaming the system, while
he simultaneously capitulated to the entreaties of Wall Street. Reagan
endorsed cutbacks on government assistance programs to the poor, and he
set in motion a series of economic programs that have proven to be
inimical to ordinary Americans.
Senator Paul's rediscovery of the joys of Social Darwinism has now been challenged by a moral voice from abroad. In his apostolic exhortation, "Joy of The Gospel," Pope Francis criticized "trickle-down economic theories" that placed a "crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power." The pope warned that we have created "new idols" based upon worship of money and the markets by which "human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded." The result, he lamented, is "a globalization of indifference" in which the poor are marginalized and denied their basic human dignity.
St.Thomas Aquinas was faithful to the message of the Gospels when he stated, "I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it." Even Adam Smith, whose free-market theories Senator Paul would otherwise recommend, observed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, "Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations...His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels."
By contrast, Senator Paul appears to be unable to grasp the essence of what it means to be compassionate. He conjures up a discredited ideology with his brain, but he is unable to feel with his heart. Unlike Scrooge, there is no evidence that the lack of empathy that he shares with his GOP colleagues can ever be cured.
