Bugged by a Ron Paul supporter

An average day in my home office begins with a flood of messages. Sixty or more of them, all politics. My inbox is rarely empty and most of the incoming messages demand attention I’m not willing to give them. Folks want me to know who they’re supporting for president in ‘08, who they love, who they loathe. And why. And why don’t I write something nice about their guy, anyway? The delete key is my favorite computer option.
Recently, one message really got me. It’s been bugging me ever since. A young Ron Paul enthusiast sent me The Modern Day Ant and Grasshopper. You know, that old fable about the industrious ant who works all summer long (no vacation for him!) getting his house ready, stocking it with food for a long, hard winter. The grasshopper, who thinks the ant is a fool, spends his summer drinking and dancing. Winter comes. The ant is warm and cozy and well-fed. The shiftless grasshopper, without food or shelter, dies in the cold. Moral of the story? “Be responsible for yourself!”
The modern day version begins the same way. A hardworking ant with foresight and ambition; a lazy, selfish grasshopper who fritters his time away. But this new fable takes a turn. Come winter, the grasshopper calls a press conference to complain that he’s suffering extreme poverty while the ant has plenty — and a BMW. Major news outlets get involved, exposing the plight of poor grasshoppers in America. The public is deeply disturbed when Oprah and Kermit the Frog discuss grasshopper poverty. Every liberal and minority activist in government gets involved, persecuting the ant. He never paid his fair share of taxes, they say. He didn’t hire an equal number of minority green bugs either. He’s fined for that and, because he hasn’t enough money to pay his retroactive tax hike, the government seizes his house.
Naturally, in this fable, the case of the ant and the grasshopper goes before a panel of liberal federal judges appointed by Bill Clinton from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case and disappears into the snow where, it appears, he dies. Clearly he’s punished for doing all the right things. The grasshopper gets the ant’s house and all his food. Of course the lazy grasshopper abuses the property; the house falls apart and the grasshopper (we all know what they’re like) is killed in a drug-related incident. His abandoned house is taken over by a gang of spiders and there goes the neighborhood.
It’s a simplistic little tale and the moral is clear: Poor folks are poor because they’re all lazy substance abusers. All of them. No exceptions. They get exactly what they deserve and the rest of us owe them nothing. The American Way, according to Ron Paul and his admirers, is endangered by taxes and social programs for the underprivileged. Give a grasshopper an inch and he’ll take your house and all your food, leaving you to starve in the snow. It’s the Darwinian principle at work; the survival of the fittest--and the richest--is the new American Dream.
How sad. How frightening that decent people fall for a brutal, shallow coda and see, in an inane, prejudicial rewrite of an old fable, a new perfected truth. The have-nots are simply bad bugs. Good bugs, like you and me, aren’t responsible for the least of these bugs. Step over ‘em. Step on ‘em. They’ve got it coming.

By Linda Hansen,
columnist