By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound

borg-regenerator

Image: someone, from something in Star Trek

Here is my characterization of just a little bit of a recurring argument (wait, recurring bad dream, no, argument, darn) that I’ve had with a fellow Christian, who enjoys tuning into MSNBC like one of the Borg hive, stepping into his regeneration chamber.

XX: My politics are from the Bible. We’re supposed to take care of the poor.

AW: Care for the poor is one reason government is supposed to protect our freedom and avoid redistributive destruction of our wealth, so that poor people can pull out of poverty in a functional market economy and so the rest of us can “freely give” to those in need, instead of government extorting our property, preventing us from adequately doing so.

XX: You want to take from the poor and give to the rich.

AW: The Bible condemns excessive and extortive taxation, where certain elites intervene between God and the individual, rob people of their livelihoods and property, then redistribute it while taking a cut (Amos 2:6-8, Matthew 23:25) as Judas Iscariot did (John 12:1-7) though Jesus warned we would always have the poor (hence poverty can’t be prevented by government).

XX: You’re reading into the Bible.

AW: I’m telling you what it says! You say your political philosophy is from the Bible, show me where? Where does it say we’re supposed to escalate the tax rates of those with more than a little bit of property, to set up a bureaucracy, to redistribute enough to the poor to make them continually government dependent, while funneling the rest to members of the “public-private partnership” patronage system (which inevitably corrupts and controls people, as well as extorting them, which is what Jesus condemned in Matthew 23)?

XX: (Chosen distracting comment here, usually an attack.)

On and on… SMH.