The Sermon on the Molehill

Ann Coulter seems to have have found a theme she could perhaps introduce as a wedge issue in future elections. It may serve to improve charitable giving on both sides of the political spectrum but will not accomplish alleviating the plight of the unemployed and those who live below the poverty level.

Her gospel for her followers in this week's column, "Liberals Give 'Til It Hurts (You)" is similar to her previous one entitled "Scrooge was a Liberal". Her incantations against liberals continues with biblical references that lift up conservatives while engaging in her routine berating of the Left. The theme? Conservatives are more generous givers to charity and Liberals are not. Naa, naa, naa.

And though she will quote chapter and verse of references from the Bible that support her views I am impressed that Ms. Coulter resembles more the Pharisees and Sadducees of the New testament verses than I am of Jesus or eleven of his twelve apostles. She condemns herself with her own words this week as she cites Matthew 6:2-4 that refers to the humility of giving by virtue of keeping it secret. By default in her comparison to conservatives, as she accuses Bill Gates and Warren Buffet of their public giving, she is guilty of the same for touting generous contributions from popular conservatives like Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. Her entire column from last week, "Scrooge was Liberal" was devoted entirely to a comparison of liberal and conservative charitable giving.

Be these facts, as a report from a study by Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks entitled "Who really Cares" indicates, the one benefit that may come from Ann Coulter's sermon on the molehill may induce is increased private giving by both liberals and conservatives. Yet I doubt it will persuade many conservatives to exceed what liberals are better at - using the power of the national treasury to overcome the disparity between the rich and poor.

By Ms. Coulter's reckoning this is thievery and forced upon unwilling participants. But viewed from another perspective, the support of legislation and federal and state funding to provide safety nets for the powerless and poorest of the poor is also a message that can be attributed to the core virtues of Christianity; virtues that Ms. Coulter and her brood seem unaware of or reluctant to confront.

The poverty that kills millions of children and elderly each year from lack of nutritional meals and adequate health coverage is beyond the scope of private donations from conservatives and liberals combined. If that were not a fact we would no longer see homeless people and high mortality rates for the politically weak and economically deprived populations in the U.S. and around the world when compared to wealthier subsets.

But giving of the sort that liberals are pronounced in is seen by conservatives as anything but christian charity. Insisting that the wealth of this nation be fairly assimilated amongst the general population is counter to the real religion of fiscal conservatives - capitalism. They seem unable to make a connection between the real gospels where Jesus condemns the excesses of the wealthy and beseeches everyone to treat less fortunate people as if they were Jesus himself. Being deprived of creature comforts and the amenities that wealth brings is declared to be a violation of their constitutional rights by those who never hesitate to tell the rest of us that they serve a higher power "not of this world".

But material wealth is only one example where the Coulter's of this world violate the core principles of Christianity. They declare themselves as pro-life when it comes to a woman choosing to end an unwanted pregnancy or a deathly ill and suffering victim who chooses euthanasia but are conversely less vocal to the death resulting from wars and criminal executions. The Christian faith suffered monstrously from religious persecution before they gained political power following the victories of Constantine. Once they were the dominant force, other faith systems became victims of burning and hangings by the Holy Church of Rome. Even today, without the restraints of our legal system there would be those fundamentalist christians who would readily take the lives of all Muslims simply because they share a faith with radicals who have twisted their scriptures to pursue acts of evil brutality on those they view as legitimate recipients of a holy jihad.

Elderly people on fixed incomes who are often forced to choose between eating cat food or purchasing needed medications and hard working people who are victims of a recession caused by greedy capital venturers are denied financial assistance through government run programs by most conservatives. The money that funds these programs are a part of the taxes we pay in a manner where it is not an undue burden but theoretically in a fashion where the richest among us gives proportionately more than less fortunate hard-working Americans. In reality though, through legislation that favors the wealthy, middle income workers wound up paying a larger share of the tax burden because they are excluded from loop holes in the tax structure that are designed by supporters of an elite wealthy group who primarily exist within conservative ranks.

Attila Ann sees this attempt at fairly distributing earned income to offset the disparities within our social fabric as a "demand [on] overburdened taxpayers [that] fund government redistribution schemes ." Never mind that 25% of working families essentially pay no taxes because they are at or below the poverty level, a fact she likes to point out when she's whining about how disadvantaged the wealthiest 2% are. It is that upper 2% who are more effected by the efforts of liberals to help pay for the economic depravations their exploitation of the capitalist system helped create than the remaining 98%.

It is this small comfortable segment of society that Ms. Coulter would have her followers believe are "just like us" in all things and deserve equal treatment under the law which often is blind to a majority who are unable or would struggle to pay for the same great legal services her wealthy friends can afford. It is the continuous effort of the Coulter's of this world to distort the reality that says the gap between the haves and have-nots is wider than it has ever been in our national history. The actions employed to use relevant Christian principles to promote this farce keeps Ann Coulter in with a small class of soul-less people that serve only their own self-interests.