Moral of the Week, Brought to You by the War College

No joking this time, kids:

Dakota War College humbles and surprises me without trying. Earlier this afternoon, I teased the War College for his eagerness for free money from the government that he so often mistrusts.

Does he come after me with a blistering attack on my own human failings? Does he taunt me for having a daily hit count only a tenth the size of his (a tenth! I can dream...)? Does he question my manhood for only having one child so far?

Heavens no. He doesn't bother swatting such a small, silly gadfly. But he responds to some other comments about the welfare mentality, like the following from a 50-something divorcee:

But there are people who live in shacks in the rattiest area of Rapid City, but they have satellite dishes and expensive video games, then wonder why they don’t have enough money to buy their kids a warm set of clothes. And in the RCJ today, there’s a single welfare-supported woman with two kids and she’s pregnant again! I am tired of subsidizing people who crank out rugrats they can’t afford, and tired of subsidizing people who make bad choices ["Second-class citizen," 2008.01.24 3:50 p.m.].

Before I could go track down the appropriate Christian theology links, PP beat me to the punch:

I’m kind of surprised at the tone of a couple of the comments here, such as Anton complaining that someone poor might actually own a playstation.

I’m not on welfare, but you have to take a few things into consideration. If they have a few kids, it’s entirely possible that it might be a family christmas gift, as the Wii Santa dropped off at my house was.

THAT was actually cheaper for me than buying everyone an individual gift. Or in an other instance, I have an xbox I bought broken and well used. I fixed a couple of parts, and managed to save myself $100.

Having been (being) an auctioneer, I can’t tell you how many times we auctioned off DVD players, Stereo equipment, big screen tv’s, etcetera, and people who might not have been able to afford new would buy them, happily taking the cast offs from a segment of society much better off than they.

I don’t have a lick of sympathy for parents who choose to drink or gamble their paychecks away. But by the same token, if someone who makes $7 or 8 an hour by digging ditches manages to scrape together enough cash to buy a used HDTV for a couple hundred dollars for entertainment at night because they can’t afford movies or restaurants, I’m not going to begrudge those things to them.

Think about walking a mile in their shoes before you group them as parasites on society, please.

[Pat Powers, 2008.01.24 4:18 p.m.]

Thank you, Dakota War College, for wisdom and decency. Here endeth the lesson.