Liberals and the “Poor”

The liberal Left likes to use the nation’s “poor” to justify its constant cries for higher and higher taxes, demonizing all who resist granting money to the visible at the expense of the invisible. Those who do not want taxes raised still higher to help the poor are not compassionate.  Over time, this short-sighted philosophy has robbed the term “poor” of any meaning. … No group of people would, on their own, come up with the concept of charity or the notion of poor.  These are both legacies of western civilization’s Judeo-Christian origins…. The main reason it is so difficult to define “poor” is because we are people, not animals. …  You see, it is relatively easy to define poverty in an animal. Say an elephant requires sixty pounds of vegetation each day to remain healthy. Say a lion requires twenty pounds of meat. If either animal receives less than this, it can safely be regarded as poor. They each have less than they need.  However, if you speak of what a person needs you start sounding a bit like Karl Marx, who felt that communism would provide all a person really needs. His spiritual heirs discovered that Karl Marx erred.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.247