Two Views of the Poor

There are two ways to look at the poor. There is the liberal view and there is the conservative view.

LIBERAL VERSUS CONSERVATIVE APPROACHES

The liberal sees the poor as a class or community of needy. The liberal sees the poor and wants to provide help by means of meeting the poor person’s need, a hand out. The liberal feels sorry for the poor and sees him or her as helpless and hopeless and a victim and product of his or her environment. The liberal’s solution to poverty is a welfare program. The poor will always be poor and needs the liberal’s assistance. Basically the liberal provides the poor with a fish a blanket and a place out of the rain or cold. In essence, the liberal provides a way for the poor to cope.

The conservative sees the poor as an individual. The conservative sees the poor and desires to provide him or her with the means to escape his or her impoverished condition. The conservative does not see the poor person’s condition as inevitable and unchangeable. The conservative desires to give the poor a helping hand. The environment that a true conservative tries to create is one in which everyone would have an opportunity to fulfill the American Dream through taking personal initiative and responsibility. In other words, the conservative provides the fishing pole and teaches the poor how to fish for himself or herself providing a way out, to escape.

Many people have been “poor” at some point in their lives. But they don’t necessarily look for a hand out (liberalism’s take) which includes providing subsistence, entitlements or welfare. A key tenet of liberalism, therefore, is rewarding loyalty, resignation and/or the status quo, it is the big brother, big-government taking care of you mentality. The other philosophy (the conservative take) is a hand up, which entails providing encouragement, employment and rewarding hard-work through individual effort.

CONSERVATIVISM WORKS

Ironically wasn’t it during the Clinton Administration that work requirements were a big part of welfare reform. I think that this was more due to a conservative congress as opposed or despite the oh-so-liberal administration in the White House.

TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT MORALITY

The liberal generally believes that there is no right and wrong, that is how they can justify being lenient on criminals, welfare and entitlements, acceptance and promotion of homosexuality, promotion of promiscuity and acceptance of abortion and related pro-death “choices”. The conservative, on the other hand, tends to believe in moral absolutes, causing them to support such issues as personal responsibility, the death penalty, pro-life, traditional one-man, one-woman marriage and abstinence based sex education.

CONCLUSION

In general, i think that liberals suffer from a severe "decency deficit". Many liberals are highly intelligent knowing exactly what they are doing when they preach and propagate their liberal dogma and agenda (ACLU, AU, PFAW, NEA, GLAD, George Soros, Tim Gill, Sherrod Brown, Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, Nancy “The Most Powerful Woman in the World, Do You Hear That Hillary?” Pelosi, Barbara Boxer etc). However, some liberal adherents (many Democratic lemming followers and deluded do-gooders) follow the liberal mantra unwittingly. The result however is the same, destruction of American values and founding principles. Pandering to the poor, I am afraid, is just one of liberals’ key pillars of the liberal "faith".