From the Washington Post:
Do we have a right to food in this country? Should children with the misfortune of having parents who are temporarily downtrodden or incapable of work due to physical or mental issues have to hit soup kitchens and other charities for sustenance (and hope the charities have the resources for them and everyone like them)?
And if you do feel that food is not a right, is there a better way to answer than Rep. Smith’s stumbling non-answer?
The question is not if Americans have the right to eat. The question is if Americans have the right to a food stamp program that is administered in ways that Scott Simon approves of.
To Simon, the answer is obviously Yes. To the rest of us, the answer is less definite.
Regards,
Shodan
No I’m pretty sure the question was are Americans entitled to eat. Let’s take a look.
Yup, that’s the question. Now Smith could have answered “Yes, but…” but he didn’t. Instead he waffled, which suggests that he might seriously think that Americans don’t have a right to eat.
I’m on a war against “the rest of us,” as any kind of a useful phrase in debate.
What’s the answer to YOU?
I agree, by the way, that your distinction is valid. “Every American should be fed,” is a different question than “Every American is entitled to the unchanged continuation of the existing food stamp program.”
Or, in the alternative, he regarded the question as a proxy for the proposition that the food stamp program must remain unchanged, and was searching for a way to effectively communicate both the basic agreement that public policy must include feeding the hungry AND that the food stamp program can be cut without sounding contradictory.
Man, I miss the good old days when the parties debated politics. You’d start with some shared premises about what is good and what is bad, and then you try to figure out the best ways to accomplish the good things and avoid the bad things. Like, both parties could agree that people eating was good, and people starving was bad, and then you’d debate whether it’s better to feed people with food stamps or private charity (or a variety of other methods, or a mix of methods, of course).
It kind of all falls apart when one party can’t even commit to saying that people should be able to eat.
What does that even mean “does every American have the right to eat”?
Of course they do. They just don’t have the right to take food off of your plate just because they are hungry.
In the era of sound bites, though, it’s not a fair conclusion that he could not commit to saying that people should be able to eat. He was instead unable to craft a sound bite that was safe from selective editing that communicated both “people should be able to eat,” and “the extant program can be cut without substantially interfering with the prior aspiration.”
If you’re going to get all literal and everything, then I guess we can agree that every American has a right to eat. That is, no on can stop them from eating without due process. Just like we have the right to free of the press, we don’t have the right to be provided with a printing press, it is not self-evident that we have the right to be provided with food.
Now, if you we are being serious, it will all depend on what we mean by “right”. By one definition, you never have a right to be provided with something. The rights secured by he government are to prevent the government from infringing on your behavior. But if we accept that rights are social constructs, then it’s quite possible every American has the right to be provided with food. All we have to do is vote for that to be a right and put it in the constitution, or for the Court to decide that it is, somehow, already there.
And what is this is their only option to get food? Should they just lay down and die?
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I’m not trying to be literal, I’m mainly try to point out that Smith waffled and he waffled hard. This really suggests at least to me that he might really think that there ought not to be a gov’t program to feed those that cannot get food for themselves. It isn’t that surprising, he’s a part of the Tea Party Caucus, which seems to think that the gov’t ought not to do a whole lot of anything for anybody, and thereby, benefit the rich. 74% of the voters in his district voted for him according to his wiki page, and some of them are probably on food stamps and other social programs, so they’re going to get exactly what they deserve by continuing to elect people who don’t care about them because they have an R next to their name. It is the same thing with the other Trump cuts. The cuts are predominantly going to hurt the very people that voted for them. Personally, I kind of love it. I wish I could have a little camera on all of them as they realize that the programs they benefit from are going away. Deep down, I know though that very very few of them will make the association. Somehow it’ll be Obama’s fault.
I agree. That Congresscritter made a fool of himself in that interview. He should either man up and say that people can starve for all he cares, or offer up his solution for those folks who can’t get enough food on their own.
I think coming away from the quote in the OP with the idea that Smith isn’t sure if having food is a right is completely unfair. To interpret his statements as saying he gave a non-answer is not fair either.
I don’t believe anyone would really expect such a question and so it throws them off. He eventually said,“I think that we know that, given the necessity of nutrition, there could be a number of ways that we could address that.”
Since he is a Republican he might believe the Food Stamp program is not the best way to address the issue. Maybe he believes charity is better, or state-run programs or programs run from municipal taxes. We’ll never know though because of the gotcha question and aggressive interviewing.
I feel so sorry for the guy. Maybe we should provide him with a safe space or at least a trigger warning. 
Exactly, like Congress or the 3rd District of Nebraska!
The fact that this is even a question open to debate at the level of national politics is an indicator of what deep shit this country is in. “Do people have a right to food, a right to eat?”??? Are you (the general “you”) fucking KIDDING ME? How can we (the general AND specific “we”) even be asking this question? I’m utterly disgusted that this question is even on the table.
Yeah, the underlying Republican answer is, “I don’t care if people eat or not. That’s their business. But I KNOW the gummint has no responsibility to facilitate free citizens’ access to food.”
It’s like Ryan saying, “We’ve granted people freedom under the AHCA-- now they’re free to buy health insurance or not! Can they afford it? NMP.”
This is what the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus have wanted all along: the federal government should get out of people’s individual lives. Period. Every man/woman/child for him/herself. The twist that the Trumpster has added is, “And let’s make the rich richer in the process.”
Of course every American has the right to eat. However once they are over 18 then they do not have the right to demand I pay for it.
Of course all people have a right to eat. If they cannot make enough money to feed themselves, it falls upon society to assist them. It isn’t a zero sum game. Feeding the poor does not take food off of your table. On a more basic level, Smith was really asked “Do you give a flying fuck if poor people starve to death?” And the answer was “I could not possibly care less.”
The man’s question was “Is every American entitled to eat?” in those six words. It boggles the mind that you can try to frame it as a “proxy” for a politically loaded question. You might also claim that it’s a proxy for a parallel question about universal health care and, by extension, he was trying to get the good Republican to admit, via this insidious questioning about eating food, that he was really a closet socialist!
I, however, see “Is every American entitled to eat?” as a question that asks whether the person believes that every American is entitled to eat. If answering “yes” to such a question poses difficulties for our Republican friend when juxtaposed with his position on food stamps, then perhaps our Republican friend is a dishonest hypocritical slimeball, of the same sort as all his fellows in the House who recently voted to take away health care from millions of poor people.
I believe the correct answer to “Is every American entitled to eat?” that is in keeping with Republican ideology is, “sure, if he can pay for it”.
ETA: Beautiful! I was being silly and sarcastic with that last statement, but damn …
Once upon a time, I might have said, “reducing complicated policy questions [howto address hunger in America] to simple broad moral questions [‘Is every American entitled to eat?’] is an unproductive way to play gotcha and score points against political adversaries, and should not be taken seriously.”
However, in the current climate, when we have so much direct action from a political party that runs counter to both political promises as well as the religious/ethical positions they campaigned on, I think it’s totally fair to ask these broad questions.
And, if the answer is “yes, I think every American is entitled to eat,” they can still say that and then explain how they think they can defend that position using their own policy suggestions. But, if they’re more interested in cutting the food stamp program than they are in feeding the poor, then the answer, for all intents and purposes, is “no, I do not think every American is entitled to eat,” and they’ll either be honest about it, or plead the fifth, so to speak, in a bullshit waffle of an answer.
Regarding this specific situation, it falls completely in line with our president, and most of the Republicans in elected office. Basically, repealing “wasteful” government spending and “harmful” (to business) legislation is always more important than the human/quality of life concerns regarding that legislation. Hence, repeal of the ACA, backing out of the Paris Accord, putting an anti-public school proponent in charge of Education, an anti-environmental protections proponent in charge of the EPA, etc etc… Removing any piece of government that might get in the way of short-term profits for business/finance is always more important than the good that piece of government might do for us as a whole.