Every once in a while some story or quote gets circulated that argues for common sense in the face of those crazy liberals or the ridiculous government.
A friend of mine on Facebook posted this one yesterday, and it motivated me to reply because it is so well crafted, and it seems so common sense, yet it is insidious in its implications.
It would be fascinating to find out where this kind of cut and paste meme originates. I searched for the first line of my friend's FB post, knowing that he did not author it, to see how many results match the text of this post (almost 33,000).
The original post, and my response, below.
This is the post that my friend put on Facebook:
these thoughts were shared with me, and I thought it would be worth forwarding on. Interesting how our culture "works"...
1. We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few
lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.
Funny how that works.
2. Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out
of money. How come we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money?
What's interesting is the social security group worked for their money, but
the second group didn't.
3. Why are we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our
military and cutting our army to a level lower than before WWII, but we
are not stopping the payments or benefits to illegal aliens.
Am I, the only one missing something?
This is exactly the kind of thing that should always be answered with facts, immediately, so that people won't continue spreading it. So this is what I said in response:
1. You're right, we should treat all gun owners as muslims.
2. Social Security taxes are paid into a trust fund maintained by the US treasury. SNAP is a means tested program coming from general federal budget. You hear about Social Security running out of funds because it is managed as a trust fund.
3. Republicans blocked VA bills but in fact legislation was passed just 2 months ago to provide for automatic pay raises for military members. Budget authority for military comes from congress, who are not doing much of anything these days.
I'd be really interested to hear what other comebacks I could have used for this post.