Jon Dude wrote a post about Cain and his insane tax policy and a couple of our beloved fellow bloggers thought Cain was cool. Maybe they were just being cute and their admiration for Cain because he is rich was tongue-in-cheek. Maybe he got there without undoing others or maybe not, but that isn’t the issue. It is an issue of elitism.

No matter how you made your money, whether you inherited it, or whether it was your smarts, and even if you didn’t step on others to do it, it should be a circumstance that ought to be seen in context. It was all your doing? How did you do it? Let’s start with, besides brains (you didn’t invent your brains, you were born with them), good health (ditto), and from somewhere, at least one person who encouraged you even if it was only one and happened when you were five. It really counts.

Let’s start with you were not abused or if you were, you had the genes that overcame it. Biological resistance to abuse is something we can’t program. We are either born with it or we aren’t, like the physique and reflexes that make a great athlete, or the artistry that makes a gifted musician. Do you then dump on those who can’t do what you do? You do if you’re an asshole.

Then let’s get to where you are wealthy and look around you and see where so many can’t match your achievements. Do you appreciate how hard it is for them to do what you did and honor them for trying even though they can’t get past the poverty mark? Or do you support programs that deny them the leg up that would put them on a more solvent path, because they really do need it and because they are where they are through no fault of their own.

There will always be deadbeats and we should separate them from the ones who really need us because there will always be people who are killing themselves to make it but can’t do it without help because of the peculiar circumstances of their lives. You can be a nurturer or someone who smugly sneers at the helpless.

If the choice you make is that “I did it, so can they,” I can only hope that life catches up with you one day and puts you in a position where you desperately need the help you are trying to deny the needy.

A good case in point is Sarah Palin’s challenged baby. This billionaire mother has no problems. 24-7 nannies do her job. She can hop around the country speaking for large fees and avoiding responsibility for the crap she dishes out. Her baby will never, ever be wealthy on his own. On his own, he’d be warehoused in an institution where, like as not, he would be benignly helped out (out as in goodbye – yes it happens). Is it his fault? And does she give a rat’s ass about the mothers who have children who need help and can’t help them?

Elitism has no place in compassionate behavior. A country without it is on its way to what happened to Germany in the 40s.

xx, Teal