A Conservative Pararable Revisited

I recently read A Parable about Socialism

The way the story goes, this young girl is about to finish her first year of college. This young lady considers herself a liberal Democrat, and she is in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs. [Republicans would call her view Redistribution of wealth.]

This young liberal woman gets into a discussion with her staunch Republican father and she challenges her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. Instead of talking about taxes the father asks his liberal little girl how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, 'How is your friend Audrey doing?' His daughter replied, 'Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.'

Her wise father asked his daughter, 'Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.'

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, 'That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!'

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, 'Welcome to the conservative's philosophy.'
At the end of this little parable the writer adds:
If anyone has a better explanation of the difference between a Republican and Democrat I'm all ears.
It is a good parable, and, in my opinion, it does reflect the conservative philosophy. The parable is saying that what is mine is mine and I don’t have to share what is mine with anyone. The parable takes a complicated issue, oversimplifies it, and then feels that this simple story is so clear and straightforward that there is no longer any room for debate. What idiot is going to defend taking a point away from a 4.0 hard working student and to giving it to some drunken party girl with a 2.0? The unfairness of that suggestion is positive, irrefutable proof that the conservative philosophy is the only correct position to take. And yet, I have misgivings. While that parable claims to advocate for FAIRNESS the story itself is UNFAIR. Here are my problems with the simplistic conservative philosophy as depicted in the parable.

This conservative parable implies that the liberal agenda is to make everyone financially equal. In the parable the republican father suggests that the liberal philosophy would want both girls to have the same grade point average. The parable is talking about GPA but it is really talking about income. If conservatives think liberals want everyone to have the same amount of income they are just plain wrong. We liberals do not advocate for the government to take all the income of this country and divide it equally so that every person is just as rich AND as poor as everyone else. The very term REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH sounds like a word has been left out. Conservatives would have you think we were advocating the EQUAL REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, and that is a an implied lie.

The father in the parable is using grades as a representation for dollars, but there is a lot of difference between grades and dollars. One could make the argument that what is unfair with nickels is equally unfair with five billion nickels, but for most people there is a difference. What if the grade point difference was like this: Audrey has a 2.O and the liberal girl has a 9,000,000.0. If we are proposing to take 1.0 from the liberal girl and giving it to Audrey so that now Audrey has a 3.0 and the liberal girl has a 8,999,999.0. GPA It may still be unfair, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s as big a deal to most folk.

The parable is actually a TEA-BAGGER I HATE TAXES parable. The issue of taxes being fair or unfair is not a simple issue. If each one of us lived on an island by ourselves then we would be obligated to no one, we would be responsible for ourselves, and we would thrive from our good choices and suffer from our bad choices. But we do not live in isolation, we live in communities. When humans live in close proximity we have a society (or a civilization.) In order to live in close proximity we must have laws so that our lives and property can be protected. To give laws meaning they have to be enforced and enforcement requires a government, and government workers have to be paid. Cities, and states, and nations are expensive, and taxation is the way the bills are paid. Taxation is the cost of civilization.

But living in a civilization involves more than just having laws and law enforcers. If we are civil, if we are civilized, it means that we accept a certain degree of responsibility for one another. I know an 11 year old child suffering from mental retardation and cerebral palsy. This child was abandoned by his mother. Had he been born in Nazi Germany he would have been eliminated because he is defective. Perhaps there are those among us today that would support terminating broken, economically expensive beings. This kid is always going to be dependent on others for survival for the rest of his life. It was not his fault that his mother abandoned him. It wasn’t his choice to be mentally retarded or to have cerebral palsy. A tea-bag conservative would probably say the mother has no right to abandon that child and should be forced to take care of the child, or forced to pay the cost of that child’s care. If no parent can be located, then teabag republicans would say that churches an charitable organizations should step in and take care of that child. It is estimated that there are 764,000 children and adults in the United States suffering from cerebral palsy. Realistically, how many of you think that we can get the churches to take care of every victim of cerebral palsy? And this is only one condition that often requires life time care. Consider quadriplegics? There are 250,000 Americans with spinal cord injured. Each year there are approximately 11,000 new injuries. The average lifetime costs for quadriplegics, is $1.35 million.

When good stuff needs to happen, and when that good stuff is expensive, then it just makes sense that all of us would agree to pay for the good stuff, and the burden will be easier to carry when it is carried by everyone.