This has been getting posted on the walls of Conservative Alley, Internet Town, recently:
(I was confused at first, too, but apparently that's what was once known as a newspaper; and it does not appear to be a fake, as fake stuff is free, whereas this gem is behind a paywall).
Text version:
The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is proud to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to 'Please Do Not Feed the Animals.'
Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.
This ends today's lesson.
So. Let's leave aside the fact that if Billy Fleming ever dipped below the poverty line, he'd have his hand out faster than you could say "social safety net." Or that Billy Fleming has benefited every moment of his life, from birth until right this very instant, from a giant complex of state and federally-funded networks like hospitals and roads and schools and regulatory agencies that keep his toys free of lead and his food free of contamination, and that he has benefited from the general sense of civilization that is engendered by these networks, which allows us to live in a civil society rather than, say, something like this, all of which have carried Mr. Fleming's smug sense of self-satisfaction through life like a delicate vase. Or that Billy Fleming enjoys weekends and minimum wages and overtime and health benefits and work safety laws that are entirely the result of a century's worth of efforts by unions, efforts fired by the idea that a person's worth predates and overrides his economic value, and that if anybody ever tried to take any of these things away from Billy Fleming, he'd cry like a baby. And let's ignore that if Billy Fleming were ever placed in the wild, Most Dangerous Game style, he'd last 1/4 the time it would take my beagle to become bear food.
Instead, the boys over at Lawyers, Guns and Money take him at his word. Let's gather up the poor and put them in our National Parks. How would that work out?
Instead of thinking along the lines of the Biblical injunction to be stewards of the planet, upstanding citizens like Bill Fleming conclude that the poor, like wild animals, should learn to fend for themselves. Moreover, they should do so just like wild animals do, under the auspices of the National Parks system, which is funded by the taxed income of upstanding citizens like Bill Fleming.
But unless upstanding citizens like Bill Fleming are able to transform their analogical dehumanization of the poor into a legal reality, the poor inhabiting the National Parks will not be wild animals playing parts in the Darwinian daydreams of upstanding citizens like Bill Fleming. They will be displaced citizens with the right to petition the government for temporary housing and access to potable water and edible food.
Instead of being minimally dependent on the federal government for meager food subsidies, the displaced poor would be maximally dependent on the federal government for all the necessities of life. Schools would have to be built. Police departments would have to be formed. Sanitation departments would have to be funded. Roads and bridges would have to be improved. The entire infrastructure of modern American society would have to be recreated in what had been the wilds of the National Parks.
This means that the tax burden the poor place on upstanding citizens like Bill Fleming would actually increase if upstanding citizens like Bill Fleming had their druthers.
This has been today's lesson.
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