Hattip to commenter Nate Winchester. This is absolutely brilliant by Dystopic at the bog Declination:
Competitive morality requires that you trumpet your moral achievements to the world. Stephen Colbert shows us how it is to be done:
Here Stephen Colbert is telling us that we are not Christians, and do not follow Christ, if we don’t want to give our earnings to the government. This is designed to wound a genuine Christian, by calling him a poor follower of Christ, and elevate himself as a superior agent of morality at the same time.
Mr. Colbert would be well-advised to read Matthew 6:2:
Therefore when you give your alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Stephen Colbert and his ilk are revealed for what they are: hypocritical trumpeters of their charity.
So long as one man in the world has less than another, men like Stephen Colbert will find cause to call us selfish and uncharitable for not giving all of our wealth to the government, to spend as it sees fit.
Those same people say that churches don’t do enough to help the poor. This meme is a great illustration:
These people know that charity and taxation are not the same thing, and yet they continue to make these insinuations, continue to trumpet their moral superiority. “I’m better than you,” says the liberal. Sometimes they imply that they are more moral in sarcastic, passive-aggressive fashion. “I worked for Greenpeace, did you?”
My first instinct would be to say “no, I prefer to donate my time and money to the parents of kids with cancer in my hometown, because charity starts at home.” But that’s actually a bad reply. It’s a form of trumpeting your own charity right back at them. More importantly, it doesn’t work.
That is their heresy, not ours. We’ve no need for that sort of thing. Instead, explain how their charity really isn’t charity. If you’re taking someone else’s money, grabbing a cut for yourself, and passing along some of it to another in exchange for his vote, you’re no Mother Theresa. You’re an asshole.
The Clinton Foundation was more interested in ensuring Chelsea Clinton’s dress fit right than whatever was going on in Haiti. Whenever massive amounts of money are moved from place to place, these people get a slice of it. They can also determine who it goes to, and under what conditions.
Go here to read the rest. There is a reason why Christ made helping the poor a personal duty for His followers rather than telling Caesar to “help” the poor at the point of the sword.
Since the conscience of man has been repudiated by the atheist and the government; involuntary charity is extortion.
Heard a great name for virtue signallers like Colbert: “fake liberals”. It really gets the going…
Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations. Helping the poor is important, but having faith is by far the greatest gift of all as it will lead us to an eternal life with God. Given the very poor moral and religious state of our modern world, I would say that the true tragic crises of poverty is of one in faith.
So Steve, you may want to recalibrate your catholic message and forego the easy talking points of the low hanging fruit.
Some really great “encapsulation-phrases”, describing very effectively the current moral-shaming argumentation that many Catholics cannot stand up to, and so are cowed into submission:
“Competitive morality”; “Virtue-signalling”; or “Aggressive morality” (that last one is my fusion/improvisation).
Here in the SF Baytheist Area it is a rich vein of all the above. So many noses in the air, so much aggressively superior morality.
My understanding is that surveys indicate Liberals give far less to charity than do Conservatives. Personally, I would like to see the Federal Government completely out of the charity business and that it become a local community obligation so that charity is seen a a personal and close to home obligation. The other thing about close to home charity is that we would be more motivated to find work for those on welfare. Welfare now is a way to maintain the Democrat voter base and is morally evil as it encourages the recipients to stay on the dole.
I don’t take virtue lectures from evil people that think murdering 57 million babies is a “choice.”
If President Trump or I tried to say, “The US is a Christian Nation,” we’d be called homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, white-supremacist, xenophobic.
Simply put, liberalism and social justice are stealing from your neighbor with the government as middleman.
Finally, since I’ve been paying taxes and doing good works, say, the 1960’s, the US government has spent tens of trillions of real dollars on poverty, is now $20 trillion in unsustainable debt, and yet there are millions more poor Americans.
If the federal government took over the Sahara Desert, in five years, there would be a shortage of sand (Milton Friedman).
A recent poster from a counter protester at a Defund Planned Parenthood rally stated;. “Planned Parenthood Saves Lives!”
When asked to compare his tally to the death toll racked up thus far by abortion on demand, he couldn’t give an answer.
All he could do is smile.
This is liberal justice mush.
Killing the innocent is Saving Lives.
And Jesus continues to weep…
When churches and charitable organizations of 19th century were faced with (swamped by) the poverty of urbanization and industrialization and migration- not just international but also within the US- it was thought that having a more organized approach that could be offered by a centralized system would be helpful. It does seem the devil presents solutions which sound good, but he remains in the details.
We lived in a third world country for three years in the late 80s so I’ve seen poverty. Each time I visit downtown San Francisco to housesit for my eldest I am appalled and saddened at the ever increasing numbers of homeless men and women. Sleeping in door ways and up against buildings like the Ritz in the bone chilling cold and rain from dusk to dawn. By morning they’ve disappeared leaving behind trash, their nest of clothes and the smell of urine. Rarely are they middle aged or seniors. Mostly they are able bodied young adults. Maybe they are down on Market Street panhandling during the day or have gone to the Tenderloin to score drugs. I never see any homeless in Chinatown. The churches have many programs, free meals and some shelter. The city government hands out cash on a certain day and that is what keeps them there. There are shanty towns beneath the freeway over passes. The city looks the other way it appears. Just hand out the checks and look the other way in liberal San Francisco.
CAM.
They pay so they don’t have to look.
They have done their duty.
The crumbs they have given, and the crumbs they shall receive.
Right on schedule… Mark Shea has to prove the post’s point.
Myself I keep wondering how we have an obesity epidemic if nobody’s feeding these kids.
People want to feel good about themselves, but don’t want the oppression of religious affiliation. By “virtue signaling” they think they can assuage that nagging feeling something is missing. Secularists use Christian values to nudge people into handing over charitable works and fellowship into the hands of government.