Totem wrote:
As John Smith so famously said (based from 2 Thes 3:10), "He who does not work, neither shall he eat." Everyone needs a hand (or handout) once in a while. However, as his quote implies, even in dire circumstances, such as famine in the face of a struggling colony, there were thouse who either thought themselves too good to labor or were too lazy to join in the group effort towards success.
Totem
It's easy to make sweeping generalizations about the state of people we look down upon in America and cherry pick quotes to support those positions, but that was neither the intended use of his quote nor of that particular verse. That situation was drastically different than what we are facing today. There aren't enough jobs for people to get back to work - it's not that people don't want to help the colony thrive.
The majority of people we are talking about in America are out of work because of things that
we did - dating back decades when we first discovered this amazing thing called outsourcing. We have systematically taken jobs out of America so that the corporations can cut costs (read: rich can get richer), and then some folks want to justify their disdain for the struggling middle and lower classes by using these kinds of quotes that aren't even applicable? It's reprehensible. If there was an abundance of jobs available and people were still staying on welfare instead of getting back to work, it would be one thing. That's just not the case.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't people out there who game the system. There are, on ALL levels. But this attack on Americans who have really been handed a lot of **** as we move towards this "global economy" is insulting. You can't strip Buy American clauses out of bills and then complain that Americans are just lazy and want a handout when they don't have a job.
What's ironic is that the above quote is much more acceptable than say, quoting Matthew 19:21. From the same book, but suggesting the rich redistribute their wealth is socialist and evil, right?