To be fair to Bricker this is a common (though not universal) theological interpretation of biblical passages like this. You may disagree with it, but it supported by a respected body of theology
A similar “personal vs. social” interpretation of bible verses–here specifically Matthew 25–was briefly discussed in the House last summer during the debate over cuts to SNAP benefits. This is Rep. Juan Vargas (D-CA):
Of course, Rep. Fincher’s quoting of Scripture gets us back to the root issue: Fincher says if you don’t work, you don’t eat - but he’s not going to make it possible for you to work, either. Which amounts to a sentence of starvation. God’s love in action! :mad:
And that’s the thing here: the problem I have with the Republicans (and with Bricker’s defense of them) isn’t rooted in their objection to any particular remedy to our national inability (unwillingness, really - we could do this) to provide gainful employment, and its consequences in the lives of millions - it’s that they reject every last remedy that might actually help anyone fight their way out of poverty.
The problem is there aren’t enough jobs, and too many of the jobs there are, aren’t enough to live off of. But the only remedy that’s OK with them is to ‘motivate’ people to seek work that largely isn’t there.
Yeah, that’s evil. I don’t mind saying so. And I don’t give a shit if it irritates Bricker to hear a spade called a spade.
And another major aspect of this tragedy is, we’ve got tons of work that needs doing. That building in Harlem that blew up, with that 127 year old gas main - well, that 127 year old gas main isn’t exactly an outlier in the older parts of our country in terms of infrastructure that’s gone way past its time, and of course every local government defers maintenance and repair first when budgets get tight, and adds it in last when good times return. So a lot more of it needs doing than ever gets done.
People that need work, work that needs doing - seems like a natural match. The Republicans are against that too. But if you don’t work, you don’t eat.
That’s evil. How can it be anything else?
And of course, there’s always that mystery question: how come those lazy bums in the inner city weren’t so lazy back in 1999, or even 2007?
Oh yeah, that’s right: there were jobs. Funny how when people could get jobs and earn money, they did. Guess eight years of the Clintons was good for this nation’s moral fiber after all, despite what the GOP was saying at the time. But now there aren’t any jobs to find, so it’s all their fault, it’s because they’re lazy.
And it doesn’t seem like poverty has that much to do with the inner city anyway. Seems like it’s all the Republican-dominated parts of the country that have lost their moral fiber. By their own words, they condemn themselves. With the help of some hard facts from the lazy gummint bureaucrats. 
The Times had an interesting column yesterday about how the British said exactly the same thing about Ryan’s Irish ancestors (don’t give them food during the potato famine, they’ll just get dependent) as Ryan is saying now about the poor.
Clearly the answer is for the poor to emigrate to a new nation across the ocean, a land of opportunity where a man can work all the land he can seize and hold, a land called - Somalia!
Somalia sounds like a libertarian paradise, doesn’t it? And a Second Amendment paradise, too. A well-armed society, which I’m sure is a very polite society, amirite? 
Somalia has no real government, and no real protection for property rights. No real courts, no real police force, no real lots of shit that libertarians recognize as necessary. Whatever their faults, the liberal meme of implying Somalia is a libertarian’s ideal society is juvenile.
It’s hyperbole, but I think it’s used because Somalia appears to be the closest place on earth that’s at all close to what libertarians desire with regards to government.
If you disagree, is there another place on earth that is closer?
You got a better place to send all the poor people?
Libertarianism isn’t anarchism, and Somalia isn’t even what organized anarchists are looking for. There are dozens of countries with functional governments, protection of natural rights, existence of property rights, police forces, and court systems that are closer to the libertarian ideal than Somalia.
Relatively economically free nations in the west differ from the libertarian ideal in degree, whereas Somalia is fundamentally missing components required for libertarianism to function.
Then the thing for libertarians to do would be move over there and set up their own government - not for the whole country, of course, but just for that part that they wished to occupy. An anarchic environment is, at the very least, an opportunity for libertarians to put their theories to the test, because there’s effectively no pre-existing government to stop them from doing so.
Getting back to Paul Ryan, another thing is that the whole bit about lazy inner-city blahs living off of welfare for generations is about 20 years out of date. Welfare reform, 1996, TANF, and all that.
A policymaker who’s supposedly serious about wrestling with the problem of poverty who doesn’t know this already should be laughed out of the room, especially one whose argument is that the big problem is dependency on public handouts. Someone making that argument should at least know the basics of what the handouts are and how they work.
Yea, well all the old arguments were about lazy adults. Now we’re talking about lazy entitled children, who expect the government to feed them!
That’s confusing.
I drive through Pigtown and it sure SEEMS like poverty.
The map shows poverty by region, not by population density. Areas of low population density that are poor areas show larger on the map than areas of high population density that are poor.
And it seems to me I recall your raising the same objection several years ago, when someone posted a map showing areas that voted for the Republican as opposed to areas that voted for the Democrat: that map was awash in red, with some blue splashes here and there, and a quick look at it suggested that Republican support was wide-spread. But you – again, if I recall correctly – made the very cogent point that the picture was deceptive – that Wisconsin (to create an example) was wide open spaces with few people, while New York City was tiny with a gigantic population density. Yet on the map, NYC appeared tiny and Wisconsin huge, because the map was physical geography.
Does that ring any bells with you?
Doesn’t this map do the same thing?
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
As best as I can tell, God is all for taking away the property of the rich and giving it to the needy - i.e. redistributionary taxation. I would refer you to Deuteronomy 24:19-22 and Deut. 26:12-13, for instance.
[/QUOTE]
I assume you would agree that the other commands of the Old Testament are equally binding, and can be used to determine God’s will for government today. Right?
Regards,
Shodan
Boy, he got you there, Arty! Hooo, doggies!
I was talking about good and evil. If everyone in the conversation believes in God, excluding him from a conversation about what is good and what is evil seems nonsensical.
I’m not sure what you’re saying I’m trying to ‘bind.’ I’m not ‘binding’ anything; I just want to call things by their right names. Contrary to Chuck Colson*, we have the right to do what is wrong. Even governments have the right to do what is wrong: if you’re afraid to make policy that might wrong someone, you’ll likely fail to make any policy at all, because any policy will have winners and losers.
I think an awareness of good and evil should strongly inform our policy choices, but you’re the only one talking about binding.
*Why Chuck Colson? Because he visited a college that I taught at, once upon a time, and gave a rousing speech whose theme, hammered in by a dozen or so repetitions, was “You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!”
You may be right. Tell me, did I produce evidence that demonstrated that the map was misleading, or did I just do a handwaving sort of thing?