Give a Man a Fish - An Ichtheological* Retrospective

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day.

Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. - Timothy Jones

Found this cynical little quotation in my morning e-mail. I do love how people who don't go to church have such pithy things to say about people who do. I looked up Timothy Jones and found several including three liberal and one Republican politician, several athletes (cyclists, cricketers, baseball players, hockey pucks and the like). None listed any religious affiliation in his personal credits.

This is, of course, a takeoff on the "Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime" homely that conservatives like to use as their killer argument against no-strings welfare programs. Lots of folks claim to have said it first. The Chinese Taoist philosopher, Lao-Tzu (an early conservative politician) is one of the earliest. The English (of course) claim it as one of their proverbs, though I suspect they quit using it back in the 50s when the labor government started pushing government sponsored British health care. The Germans love this one, only it goes, "Give a man a fish und you vill feed him for a day. Teach a man to work in ze Krupvorks Factory making veapons for ze military und he vill be a useful member of German society for ze rest uff his life und vill be able to buy fish at ze fish market."

There have been lots of humorous takeoffs on this sayings and I'm going to finish this on a light note (I promise).  But first let me do my own take on this particular tiring swipe at people of faith.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Give a man religion and He will find a way to feed fish to 5,000."

At least that's been my experience with Christians and fishes. Folk like Mr. Jones would like to think persons of faith are dupes and tools of "the establishment". This helps them avoid feeling guilty about skipping weekly services. It's odd then, that so many of them are devoted to building up a massive government that has all the trappings of a religion including idol worship (see Barak Obama), repetitive chanting ("Hope and Change, Hope and Change...), tithing (see IRS, property tax, capital gains tax, and sales tax) and obligatory attendance at religious functions (see Social Security office, The Iowa Caucus, the DMV, the IRS, and the State of the Union Address).  Ah, well. I've always thought that religion and politics were virtually indistinguishable anyway.

Now on to the fun stuff.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.....

•  Teach a Democrat to fish and he'll create a government-funded sport fishing study to figure out how to tax you for fishing. 
• Teach a man to fish and you can sell him a fishing license, rod, tackle, boat, boat trailer, bigger pickup with a towing package, expensive lures, a sonar rig, subscription to "Bass Masters"....
• Teach a man to fish and he starts skipping church and sitting in a boat all day drinking beer.
• Teach a man to fish and he's got a one in seven chance of getting drunk, falling out of his boat and drowning.
• Teach a man to play fishing games on X-Box and he won't bother you for weeks!
• Teach a man to fish and you can get rid of him for a whole weekend.
• Teach a man to fish; and you will have to listen to the same danged fish stories over and over and over for the rest of your life unless someone accidentally laces his coffee thermos with antifreeze.
• Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Unless he doesn't like sushi - then you also gonna have to teach him to cook.
• Give him fish aversion therapy, and he stops pestering you to give him your fish.
• Give a woman a fishing boat for mother's day and you'll be sleeping on the couch again and she probably won't let you use HER boat.
• Teach a man to phish, and he'll clean out your bank account.
• Teach a man to fish and somewhere some woman is inevitably going to have to learn how to clean and gut that fish and fry enough for him and his 10 buddies and their families all the while listening to stories about the one that got away.
• Teach a man to fish and he will store stink bait, worms and minnows in your fridge.
• Teach a liberal chick to fish and you'll have to listen to her go on and on about how it's such a cruel sport and you'll have to explain that fish don't have nerves in their lips for about the thousandth time.
• Teach a woman to fish and you'll soon be riding around in a much cleaner boat.
• Teach a dog to fish and you can win the $10,000 prize on America's Funniest Home Videos (but only if the dog hooks you in the crotch with a fishing lure).
• Teach an atheist to fish and maybe you won't have to listen to him bitch about religion all the time cause he'll be too busy bitching that he can't seem to catch any fish.

Got to go. The salmon are running in the Puyallup River and I'm stocking up pink salmon fillets for the winter.

© 2017 by Tom King - Puyallup, Washington

*Yes, I meant to spell it that way - Ickthus (Greek: pertaining to fish) plus theological (Latin: "pertaining to religion")

Barbecue Sauce Threatens Washington, DC

-
DATELINE: (Washington, DC)

In the wake of Hurricane Irene and a major earthquake, the nation's capitol is being threatened with a new disaster - a flood of barbecue sauce. In the wake of Texas Governor Rick Perry's announcement of his candidacy for the presidency, Washington eateries are digging out their barbecue recipes in anticipation of the flood of conservatives and Texans that will descend on the city along with the new administration.

Washingtonians are bracing for a flood of new Tex-Mex restaurants and a spate of new barbecue selections on the menus of their favorite gourmet snobatoriums, displacing many of their favorite quiche and sprout-laced dishes on those tiny little gourmet menus. Some restauranteurs have resorted to providing alternate "barbecue-free" menus to appease angry liberals that make up their regular clientele.


OKAY, SERIOUSLY....

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'd vote for Perry just to irritate the Washington liberals. Every time there's a Texan like the Bushes, Lyndon Johnson or Ronald Reagan in the White House (Reagan was the only "Texan" I ever knew that lived in California), the local restaurants add barbecue and Tex-Mex dishes to their menus. For some reason this really irritates the black trench-coated intelligencia that permanently reside in our nation's capitol. I think it's because the Texas-flavored fare replaces some kind of squid or sprouts on the menu, I don't know. The anti-barbecue rant was a complaint I heard frequently on both my visits there during the Bush II administration.

I ordered some barbecue at lunch one day, just to send my lib colleagues over the edge. It was kinda fun to watch! Those ladies get really cranky when things ain't goin' their way. The barbecue wasn't bad either, though the Hunt's barbecue sauce over hamburger at one place was a bit on the lame side. Did these people never hear of "Bull's-Eye". Sheesh!

I do have to give them credit, though. The Washington chefs do get better at it after about 6 or 7 years of a Texas-style Republican administration. I mean some of those fellers ain't bad with a spatula, if they can resist the urge to put parsley and endives on everything.

And what's up with dribbling that brown gravy stuff on everything? There's not enough of it to tell what it tastes like and they don't give you any biscuits to sop it up with.

Tom King - (recently of Tyler, TX, now transplanted to the mission fields of Washington* state)

* I do have to admit it's kinda interesting living next door to a volcano in the only state named after a US president. After all, George Washington originally came from East Texas. We know this because of the whiskey stills out behind his barns at Mt. Vernon.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Conservative Compassion and the New Tone

(c) 2011 by Tom King


Philosopher John Locke - Noted Liberal
and champion of individual rights.

 
There are those who would say those two words are an oxymoron. Conservatives get constantly painted by the left-wing media as tub-thumping, gun-toting Neanderthals who are, let me see if I remember this correctly - racist, homophobic, bigoted, ignorant, knuckle-dragging, cold-hearted, selfish and narrow-minded drones.

I'm sure I didn't get them all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware what epithets some of the knuckle draggers on my side of the political aisle have tossed out about the left. They aren't any better than their liberal adversaries and deserve a slap-down from their fellow conservatives. They get it too - pretty regularly. If we're going to argue with our liberal friends we need not - indeed must not - use the same techniques they do. Most conservatives would find it repugnant to dip into the Saul Alinsky/Karl Marx playbook to make their argument anyway.  It would feel slimy and besides it's not in our nature. Lying for a good cause doesn't sit well with those for whom telling the truth is one of the commandments.

The problem is the label conservative. A conservative today is not what he was 200 years ago. Those who are now tagged conservatives embrace a philosophy that was once considered liberal in this country. John Locke, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the like were considered the great liberal minds of their day.  The conservatives wanted to preserve the nobility and the monarchy. They opposed the revolution because it dethroned the elite and took away what they considered their birthright - the right to rule the ignorant masses.

In the 1800s the once powerful conservatives searched for a way to transmorgrify themselves in America into something that preserved the right of the privileged class to rule.  They found it in a movement that on its surface was meant to "free the masses" - progressive socialism. The tenant of this new movement was that the ignorant masses needed the guidance of smart people - people that the new Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest said would pass along their superior intelligence to their offspring. So with the aid of poorly understood science, some political sleight of hand and a conserted effort to redefine the meaning of "liberal", the nation's high and mighty put on the mantle of the founding fathers for a while - for as long as they needed it to consolidate their power which was the whole point of the thing anyway.

Meanwhile the constitutional liberals who believed in liberty, freedom, self-reliance and treating others the way you want to be treated found themselves becoming what conservatives have always been - people opposed to radical change.  In America, however, we had already built a foundation on liberal principles and instead of like European conservatives who fought to maintain the power of the noble elite and to convince the "masses" willingly to submit to their governance, America conservatives, instead,  fought to maintain the power of the people, to break the power of the high and mighty who would create an American nobility if they could and convince the "ignorant masses" that they should come along quietly like good little workers.

Conservatives today believe what liberals of the 1700s believed. We believe that all men are created equal, that they have the right to life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness. We believe that no man or woman has the right to lord over us, to arbitrarily take our rights to self-govern and hem us about with regulation, interferance and bureaucracy.  We give to the poor and needy far more than our so-called liberal opponents who consistently give a tiny percentage of income compared to their conservative neighbors. We believe your faith is your business so long as you leave us to worship as we see fit.

There are racist homophobic bigots among us on both sides of the political aisle, just as there are profoundly unChristian people who sit in a pew every Sunday, prayerbook firmly in hand. Today's conservative principles do not preclude a person being loving, charitable, compassionate and good. They are, in fact, the same principles that guided the framers of the Constitution, which in turn framed the real change that took place in our country and led to emancipation, women's suffrage and a level of general prosperity unknown in history. Our poor are fat, our sick are cared for better than anywhere else and our nation, though we fight fiercely among ourselves in the arena of ideas, we have renounced empire building and settled into our current role as the world's peacekeeper.  We have defeated enemies and built them back up again, better than they were before - Germany, Italy, Iraq. We have shed American blood to try and save others from invaders - Kuwait, Korea and Vietnam. We have done wrong and regretted it and tried to make amends. We carry guilt for our mistakes - for Native Americans and slavery in particular.

But it has always been stubbornly clinging to the great liberating ideas of the Constitution and Declaration that has transformed us into the bastion of liberty we are today. We who believe you shouldn't mess with a good thing are painted as selfish and bigoted by our opponents, when every principle we hold dear argues against selfishness and bigotry.  There are those who would toss aside our founding principles in the name of change, offering the illusion of "security" in exchange for a bit less liberty.

Given the history of rule by the special people, we conservatives, though disposed by nature to be compassionate, can, perhaps be forgiven for believing that's not a good idea and getting a bit riled up about the whole thing. 

Just sayin'

Tom King