NO phrase has been more misused in an election campaign and has come to have less meaning tan the phrase “moral values,” especially after the recently proposed federal budget that attempts to balance the income and outgo on the backs of the poor and indigent.
The proposed budget cuts also affect farmers, and if they go through, the entire nation will feel them. Everybody will be hit in the breadbasket-literally. Cut back farmers’ aid and watch what happens to food prices.
Many of today’s Americans have been raised on a generation of neoconservative largesse and truly believe that the current deficit spending is classic conservative economics. They are dead wrong.
True conservatives are blushing crimson at what they are seeing under the Bush Administration and wondering what can they do to restore dignity to a party that once was known for stability. Quite a few veteran Republicans in office are yanking on the reins and doing just that now. They are refusing to allow the budget to pass, complaining that it has “far too many problems,” a kind way of saying it is total madness.
The people who make the erroneous assumption that only liberals are “friends of the poor” fail to realize that quite a few Republicans are concerned that the lower income levels merit more consideration than they are getting. As much as that may seem out of line with the traditional GOP platform, many Republicans are realizing that radical politics have harmed more than helped the party.
The real problem is: who are the friends of the poor? The most painful part about poverty is the powerlessness of being made nonentities only because of poverty. In some locations around Washington, D.C., the financial discrimination is outrageously blatant.
The concept that every person should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of financial status seems to be so elementary, so basic, and yet so distant and impossible to achieve in a society that only looks at balance sheets and financial reports. Money matters, but it’s not the only thing that matters. If there’s one thing I have learned since the day I ended up on the street in April 2003, it’s that it really could happen to anyone, and that we really all are human beings.
Those who have seen the Thornton Wilder play, The Matchmaker, or the musical upon which it was based, Hello Dolly!, might recall that the play that talked quite a bit about money. Dooly Levi, born Gallagher, spends the entire play seeking to marry a rich husband and throughout quotes her late husband, Ephraim Levi, and his wise sayings about money. Ephraim always said that “the difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous, and that can shatter the world, whereas the difference between a lot of money and a little money is very slight, and that also can shatter the world.”
Interesting, isn’t it? However, the line that always got the audience3 rolling in the aisles was when Dolly would say, “My late husband, Ephraim, would always say that money, if you’ll pardon the expression, is like manure. It doesn’t do a bit of good until you spread it around, encouraging young things to grow.” Say that with the flair of Carol Channing, the original Broadway Dolly, and you have a good picture of how the audience howled.
Isn’t it a shame that the money isn’t spread around to encourage things to grow here? We sure could have used it. Instead, we’ve cultivated gardens on the other side of the world that we may never see and that may well turn out to be hostile nations.
Shouldn’t our own “moral values” involve caring for the wellbeing of our own people long before we care for the wellbeing of people in foreign lands?
