The Republicans’ empathy is gone: Romney and Ryan envision a society of pure selfishness

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ^ | Monday, August 20, 2012 | Stanley Crouch

[Condor51]

Well, whoop-dee-doo. Some barking moonbat from NY gets his letter to the editor published in the NY Daily News. Big Deal.

Are we supposed to hang our heads in shame because we're not all touchy-feely Alan Alada girly-men, or something? Stanley Crouch (fitting name) can go take a flying leap off the Brooklyn Bridge.

I bet this moron was crying while he typed this tripe.

[The_Reader_David]

More nonsense based on the left’s delusion that state and society are identical. Not wanting to pay taxes and finding the state a suboptimal way of succoring the poor are not signs of selfishness. Not giving to charity, not succoring the poor voluntarily, but insisting that the state must pick everyone’s pockets to succor the poor, those are signs of selfishness.

I care more about how much a candidate for office was able to claim as a deduction for charitable contributions than how much he paid in taxes.

[p. henry]

Democrats claim that, after a 50 year failed experiment in borrowing from our children and grandchildren to finance our own lives, any attempt to control spending, even the fairly timid Paul Ryan attempt, is advocacy of a return to Social Darwinism supposedly rampant in the 19th Century.

This is all a lie. We have no choice to reduce spending. Common sense tells us that we cannot keep borrowing 40% of what we spend. We will be Greece if we do not start showing some responsibility now. Besides, it is morally reprehensible to borrow from our children to finance our current expenses.

Increasing taxes on those who make more than $200,000 per year will not help. There are simply too few of them to make a difference, and depleting our supply of investable capital will retard growth at a time when growth is the only relatively painless way out of our predicament. The politics of envy is as wrongheaded as it is ugly.

Social Darwinism really never did exist. Before Progressivism demonized religion and posited that pretty much everything is a right to be secured by government, private charities, many of them church based, did a pretty good job of providing a safety net.

Speaking of the safety net, it has become a hammock. The Central Valley of California has an unemployment rate in the teens, but the growers can't find enough pickers. Many people, my wife and I among them, have personal experiences with folks who have declined perfectly fine jobs during the recession and the "recovery" because living on the dole was easier and/or more convenient.

The safety net has become incredibly wasteful and riven with fraud. Medicaid alone will bankrupt us but is a poster child for a massive program that promises much, costs a bunch, and delivers very little if any value. What kind of empathy relegates the poor to such a program?

[presidio9]

Someone Mittens trusts (as far as I can tell, that list is one person long: Ann Romney) needs to buy him an iPod loaded with Reagan speeches, and force him to listen to it every night when he goes to bed.

[eddie willers]

“There is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.”

True that.

[Little Ray]

The Democrats lack all empathy for children.
The children that don’t get aborted are being taxed through deficit spending.

[nodumbblonde]

Ya know, I can’t seem to get people to understand this. I’m not a selfish person who lacks empathy.

I resent being told who I MUST have empathy for. I resent being told where my generosity MUST be directed. I resent that my charity is REQUIRED (via taxes) and have no say in who reaps the benefits of my labor.

It’s been proven time and again that conservatives are more charitable than liberals. All we want is the freedom to be charitable with people and causes we believe in.

[GeronL]

doesn’t Obamacare cut Medicare by $800 billion??

who writes this crap??

[CharlesWayneCT]

Well, that IS what his critics say. They are wrong.

And Crouch has some other whoppers in his article, things that make it hard to take what he says seriously.

[plain talk]

The question today is where the Republican Party stands on questions like health care, Social Security and, in general, the social safety net that is so special to the American way.

No. The question is where does the Democrat Party stand on economic growth, jobs, lower taxes and unemployment that are essential to our country's survival.

[Chaguito]

It’s a hoot to me that the liberals I know insist that Christianity isn’t necessary to define moral behavior, but they insist that Ayn Rand cannot make a moral case because she is an atheist. Or when she does, they insist her morality is flawed, as if they knew how to define “flawed.”

Romney should meet Obama halfway. Offer to show his gross adjusted income and charitable giving numbers if Obama will show his, let’s say for five years. Better yet, Obama’s AND Biden’s.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Today, though, that sense of empathy is disappearing in the ranks of the Republican Party. For the most extreme conservatives, empathy is no more than liberal claptrap. It was Mitt Romney, after all, who said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”

It is a very lazy incompetent writer who uses obvious mis-interpretations of statements to try to make points. As an opinion columnist, I avoid this studiously, because if you are trying to persuade someone you are right, it is stupid to do so by making blatantly rediculous arguments.

Romney's statement was NOT that he had no concern for the poor. It was that he wasn't worried about them, BECAUSE they were already being taken care of with the social safety nets that were already in place. We don't need new programs or policies to rescue the poor, the poor are doing just fine. It's the middle class that is being turned into the poor, and overwhelming the safety nets, that are the problem.

Given that ROmney immediately said he was concerned for the middle class, even if you go with this false narrative that Romney didn't "care" about the poor, he clearly "cared" about the middle class, and is therefore NOT exhibiting signs of lack of empathy, or heartlessness.

We in fact care more about the poor and the middle class than the liberals. They just want to force everybody into dependence on the government, so they can get more power, and buy more votes to keep their plush offices.

Republicans want to save people from that dependence by helping them onto self-sufficiency, rather than coddling them.

The argument in this column is like saying you don't care about your kids if you don't give them a cookie everytime they ask for one, and instead insist that they eat vegetables that they don't want to eat.

[Salvation]

With Ryan on the Ticket, Spotlight Focuses on the Catholic Church
Does Ryan have a “Catholic problem”?
Paul Ryan Urges Catholics to Act Before Religious Freedoms Erode
Wisconsin bishop praises Paul Ryan, discusses intrinsic evils, prudential judgments

Paul Ryan urges Catholics to act before religious freedoms erode
Dolan: Ryan Is a ‘Great Public Servant’ (great insight into Ryan's views)
Paul Ryan’s Bishop Defends Him Amid Attacks on His Application of Church Teaching
Paul Ryan, Catholic Who Looks to Church's Social Teaching, Tapped as Romney Running Mate
The other Ryan: the candidate’s wife, Janna
Paul Ryan, Joe Biden, and Liberal False Equivalence
Ryan as VP Pick Continues Election Year Focus on Catholicism
Paul Ryan Faces Left-Wing Religious Attack
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Holiness (Paul Ryan)
Paul Ryan: Midwesterner, Catholic, intellectual

[CharlesWayneCT]

I have never been a teenaged girl, so I don't listen to Justin Beiber, and I don't do "BARF alerts."

Hear, Hear.

I sometimes think people do barf alerts because they are afraid someone here will think they agree with the article. But that is what the comments section is for, so the poster can give their opinion.

Others seem to think barf alerts are necessary, lest really stupid freepers think they are supposed to agree with an article. But freepers are for the most part smart people who can think for themselves, and as you said, they can read an article and know it is BS without someone telling them.

[ronnyquest]

Leftists are terrified that people will stop feeding their machine. They are terrified by Rand’s writings in the same way they were terrified that Joseph McCarthy would discover them for what they were. People are awakening and finally begin to understand Rand’s message. Marxism is indefensible in any sense.

[ExCTCitizen]

Romney and Ryan envision a society of pure selfishness,

What PURE BULL!! The DEMONCRATS are the selfish Party. They don't want to use THEIR money, but other people money...

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

In theory, liberal and conservative perspectives should better each other by making realistic demands the opposition can meet. They should use facts like ice water, dousing those who have grown too hot with their own ideology.

In other words do as the democrat says and forget about all you think is right because it's not a liberal Ideal

em·pa·thy 

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

It Appears the author knows not the difference between empathy's and  

sympathy :

harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another.

Let it be said the Author can be written off as less than educated of his own Scribe

I love it when Liberals try to prove that the only way to live is how they think life should be lived when they cannot live as they say life should be played out

Arthur Brooks, the author of "Who Really Cares," says that "when you look at the data, it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more." He adds, "And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money."

And he says the differences in giving goes beyond money, pointing out that conservatives are 18 percent more likely to donate blood. He says this difference is not about politics, but about the different way conservatives and liberals view government.

"You find that people who believe it's the government's job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away," Brooks says. In fact, people who disagree with the statement, "The government has a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can't take care of themselves," are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

Attitudes toward the way charitable giving was issued changed and changed back again from Institutions of helping the poor to those who were closer to politics such as PAC's and back again to charitable organizations Conservatives still give more to Charities and Church or faith based Organizations than Liberals ever will unless of course the Liberal uses the never emptying pocket of some one else's trousers ...But they would still transfer the monies from your pocket to theirs and the poor could go hang because of course the poor is their voting base fooled into thinking the Democrats and liberals care so deeply about their well being than those nasty old Conservatives ....

[SkyPilot]

The Liberals can spin it any way they want.

The truth is that "entitlements" are breaking the back of this nation.

50% of this country's population pays no Federal income tax, and yet over 100 million Americans receive some form of Govt ATM direct deposit, Medicare, welfare, Medicaid, unemployment, or Social Security.

Food Stamp abuse has gone logarithmic, so much so that the Obama administration uses tax payer money to advertise and promote the program on Spanish language radio and television stations listened to and watched by demographics of massive illegal alien populations. And yet, our Defense budget has been the only real thing cut, by hundreds of billions, and it is about to get decimated in January. But Food Stamps? Money is no object.

We have millions upon millions of Americans (and millions of illegal aliens) who are fat, lazy, and unproductive. The "empathy" factor is gone. The last two generations of Americans who are officially "poor" are the only generations in human history who are over 50% obese. In short, we have a majority of "poor fat people" - a phenomenon unknown in human history. We have become literally bankrupt with empathy.

It is time to cut millions off of the dole. Now.

[1035rep]

[nascarnation]

LOL
as my Irish Cathholic Dad used to say

A Kennedy is somebody who wants to give your money to the poor and get credit for doing it.