Congressman Paul Ryan is justifiably taking flak over his recent CPAC speech, in which he said our government is offering people “a full stomach — and an empty soul.”
Specifically, he mentioned free school lunches, and how soul-crushing a hot, nutritious, government-provided meal is to a hungry kid, when all that kid wants is a bag full of Cool Ranch Doritos and mayo-drenched pimiento loaf sandwiches, just like everyone else.
Thus spake the great and powerful Ryan:
“This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my friend Gov. Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch — one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.”
That’s the funny thing about personal anecdotes. They can be used to embroider just about any vicious ideology you like — even the notion that feeding hungry kids whose parents have a hard time putting food on the table is somehow devastating to those children’s salvation. As Jesus himself said, “It is about as easy for a kid with a stomach full of government-subsidized high-fructose corn syrup and sketchy surplus cheese to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Because, you know, look how fat he is.”
And when Jesus said, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me,” it was a mistranslation from the original Aramaic into the Greek, which didn’t have a precise term for “repeal the death tax.”
So, anyway, if you demand rugged Ayn Rand individualism from 6-year-olds without a stable home life, you’re doing God’s work. If you’re handing out loaves and fishes to every out-of-work carpenter in Judea like some sort of lunatic socialist, you might as well invest in time-share condos along the Lake of Fire. Got it?
Ryan is one sick dude. Seriously.
But here’s what I really think: Why is Ryan so solicitous when it comes to the wayward souls of the poor? Why isn’t he looking out for the souls of layabout millionaires and billionaires?
It’s fitting that Ryan gave his speech around the same time that Forbes released its list of the world’s billionaires.
Class warrior that I am (there’s nothing I like better than to make a multibillionaire cry rivers of salty tears on his imported, gold-filigreed suede falconry gloves), I couldn’t help but notice that many of these billionaires (13%) inherited their massive wealth. To be fair, two-thirds built their own fortunes and 21% added onto fortunes they had received, but let’s just focus on that 13% for the time being.
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Why are their children spared the soul-enriching effects of toddler scurvy? If you want to find out what hot conservative spittle feels like on your corneas, ask a Republican how many U.S. citizens are on food stamps. Oh, he’ll tell you, even if he doesn’t know. The answer? Somewhere around 15%. Meanwhile, a comparable 13% of the members of the billionaire community are living entirely off someone else’s largesse.
So if a kid who gets a free scoop of creamed corn every day has an empty soul, imagine how hollow the dude who’s supping on free Waldorf salad and foie gras must be.
But is Paul Ryan standing up for that guy? Not hardly. Though he is battling for the souls of the desperately poor and hungry. He’s been one of the biggest champions of not feeding poor people food — thereby feeding their souls scrumptious morsels of dignity — in Congress.
But the rich? Apparently, he hates them. Among other tax provisions that would seek to feather the already too-comfy nests of the mega-wealthy, he has advocated for eliminating the estate tax (i.e., the death tax), which only applies to multimillion-dollar estates.
So Alice Walton — who through no fault of her own inherited billions from her father, the founder of Walmart, and according to Forbes is now worth $34 billion — would have inherited even more in a Paul Ryan utopia, likely making her even lazier and more undignified.
That is unacceptable.
It’s nice that Ryan is so concerned about the poor. But why is he so unconcerned about the rich? They have souls, too — even if some of them don’t always act that way.
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