# Don't cut government then spit on charities and churches **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 6, 2008, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354 "2008-09-06T16:36:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/21 "2008-09-07T01:37:30Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > And you think you can do that by ignoring the actual words that they say? > > Interesting. Can you teach me that trick? When people contradict themselves, you have to ignore at least some of their statements. And don’t tell me you think Rudy Giuliani believes every word that comes out of his own mouth. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/22 "2008-09-07T01:39:22Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > When people contradict themselves, you have to ignore at least some of their statements. Really? Which ones? **Shayna** wants you to state the particular algorithm which guides you to the “real” thinking there… ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/23 "2008-09-07T01:49:50Z")
Indeed, I wait with bated breath. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/24 "2008-09-07T01:57:23Z")
I already explained it. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/25 "2008-09-07T02:42:49Z")
I think Rudy believes every single word that comes out of his mouth. As he says them. I don’t think he sees any contradiction at all. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/26 "2008-09-07T18:21:40Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > When people contradict themselves, you have to ignore at least some of their statements. > > And don’t tell me you think Rudy Giuliani believes every word that comes out of his own mouth. For me, you don’t attack things that you genuinely support, even to take a shot at an opponent. It doesn’t make sense. And I don’t think it would even occur to normal people to go there. Who says, “Well, I really support community organizing but I will attack it this time.” It would be like me attacking someone for being pro-choice. On the other hand, when you just pay lip-service to something, when you never respected it in the first place or your respect is conditional at best, that’s when these sorts of attacks start coming out of people’s mouths. The Michael Richards Effect. Who looks at a resume that includes community organizing and says, “Ooh, this is where we’ll get him”? People who don’t respect community organization and think it’s foolish, that’s who. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/27 "2008-09-07T18:35:01Z")
Fuck political expediency. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/28 "2008-09-07T18:37:34Z")
When have they not sneered at virtually everyone. Hell, before he needed the right wing fundamentalists, McCain sneered at them too. Republicans are just better than the rest of us, despite the fact that McCain and Palin have never held private sector jobs, never met a payroll not funded by taxpayers, never did well in school, and never put their own families before their own personal ambitions. Just ask John McCain’s first wife, Cindy’s sister, Bristol Palin. But they would like to protect your family. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/29 "2008-09-07T18:46:30Z")
Government is supposed to protect and help those that cannot help themselves. The sooner the US looks like Thunder Dome the happier conservatives will be. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/30 "2008-09-08T00:09:39Z")
> [@5-HT](#): > > I’m not going to come right out and state this as a fact, but the IMPRESSION I’ve gotten from some conservatives is that “community organizer” is sort of code for a particular kind of community organizer. Namely the angry minority kind. It’s possible. It’s also possible that for some conservatives, the word _organizer_ still evokes memories of meddling unionists like Walter Reuther and César Chavez. Perfectly con-safe charity I assume would happen through the White churches, accompanied by a hefty dollop of preaching and a certain judgmentalism, all well aligned with the doctrine of Personal Responsibility First. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/31 "2008-09-08T04:49:51Z")
[Community Organizers Fight Back](http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com/%5B/url) > [@](#): > > Community organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis. **The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities”** and launched a web site, [http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com](http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com), to defend themselves against Republican attacks. > > “Community organizers work in neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the failing economy,” said John Raskin, founder of Community Organizers of America and a community organizer on the West Side of Manhattan. “The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we’re trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed. Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn’t need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting evicted from their only home. If John McCain and the Republicans understood that, maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to make fun of community organizers like me.” > > . . . > > “I have ‘actual responsibilities,’” said Jacqueline del Valle, a community organizer in the Bronx. “If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldn’t have so much responsibility. Maybe working people would have an easier time in America today. But that’s not our reality, and they don’t have to mock us while we’re trying to clean up their mess.” > > . . . I love it! They are too stupid to have realized how horribly this was going to backfire right in their faces. ---
**Author:** ![Waenara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/50afbb/32.png) [@Waenara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waenara)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/32 "2008-09-08T05:30:04Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > [Community Organizers Fight Back](http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com/%5B/url) I love it! They are too stupid to have realized how horribly this was going to backfire right in their faces. Did you read the comments on that blog? I’m not religious, but I loved this one: > [@](#): > > Jesus Christ was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor. > > Perhaps “good Christian” Sarah Palin should consider that. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/33 "2008-09-08T06:06:57Z")
> [@Waenara](#): > > Did you read the comments on that blog? I’m not religious, but I loved this one: > > > [@](#): > > > > Jesus Christ was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor. > > > > Perhaps “good Christian” Sarah Palin should consider that. Might not be such a good thing if Sarah Palin starts thinking, “You mean I can have him put to death?” ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/34 "2008-09-08T06:35:31Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > Relying on private community support fits right in with their whole small-government philosophy, and they’ve been promoting this idea for a long time; whereas the jabs at community organizing only emerged in this one context and were specifically directed at Obama. And yet, the GOP (as an organization, not necessarily the entirity of its membership) thinks that while government is **bad** , _they_ all must be in charge of it, or things will go horribly wrong. This raises the question: Why do people who think that the government is evil, want so much to do with it? Seems to me, the _smart_ thing to do, would be to stay away from it completely. Its sort of like those bumper stickers that say, “I love my country, but fear my government” given that the government is made up of “we, the people, of these United States,” doesn’t that mean that they are afraid of themselves? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/35 "2008-09-08T18:21:55Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Once they do that, it’s perfectly proper to conclude that the original “support” for the concept of private community organizations was a sham and a fraud (i.e. either they simply don’t care what happens to the people who are supposed to turn to them for help, or they actively want such people to be reduced to helpless penury for some reason). My view is sort of like this, but not exactly. It’s not precisely that they _want_ these people to suffer in the margins; it’s that they are laughing at anybody who thinks that they can be helped in the first place. “Seriously? You want to try to drag those poor lazy Negroes (or whoever) out of the ghetto? Sure, knock yourself out, see how far you get, since you apparently haven’t learned anything from the last few decades of wasted effort, haw haw haw.” It’s just as sociopathic, but it comes from a different place, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/36 "2008-09-08T21:14:44Z")
One right wing blogger was going about the majesty that is Palin and said something like “Obama was a community organizer…whatever that means.” I responded by saying, “One example of a community organizing group would be the Christian Coalition.” Oddly, he didn’t respond to me. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/37 "2008-09-08T21:31:26Z")
\ ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/38 "2008-09-08T21:44:09Z")
Now why did the Right start attacking being a community organizer? Oh yeah, when the Left slammed being a small-town mayor. Carry on with your ranting. ---
**Author:** ![FallenAngel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/39 "2008-09-08T21:45:29Z")
Here’s the other side of the whole “community organizer” thing. Red staters and middle class blue staters don’t know what a community organizer does because in those areas, they’re called “Congressman” or representatives. They’re the folks you go to when you have a problem the government might be able to help with. However, if you live in a democratic area like Chicago with a machine so corrupt that real elections are impossible and the government exists only to line the pockets of contributors, you need a community organizer. They don’t replace the machine with anything better, nor do they want to. They work for and shill for the machine and, in return, they get the machine to toss the people they’re agitating for some scraps. This a) keeps the people in their “rightful” (according to party politics) place and b) makes them feel grateful for their machine’s boot on their collective chests. Basically, Obama is basing his run for the highest office in government on his belief that democratic change is impossible. “The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we’re trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed." That’s a great line, but if it’s the Republican’s fault, how come only places run by corrupt democratic party politics need community organizers? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354/40 "2008-09-08T22:02:29Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > Now why did the Right start attacking being a community organizer? > > Oh yeah, when the Left slammed being a small-town mayor. > > Carry on with your ranting. Cite for the left slamming being a small town mayor? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dont-cut-government-then-spit-on-charities-and-churches/462354.md?page=3)