Rabbi Daniel Lapin observes,
There remains one more vital way in which Christian faith in America serves as a bulwark against growing government size and taxation. You see, the liberal Left likes to use the nation’s “poor” to justify its constant cries for higher and higher taxes, demonizing all who resist granting money to the visible at the expense of the invisible. Those who do not want taxes raised still higher to help the poor are not compassionate. Over time, this short-sighted philosophy has robbed the term “poor” of any meaning. Just try asking your friends what it means and you will quickly find out that nobody really knows. Have them tell you a dollar amount, either in assets or in income, below which anybody could legitimately be Calle poor. Instead of an answer you will usually get a long discussion . This is because the term “poor” would not exist were it not for the Bible. No group of people would, on their own, come up with the concept of charity or the notion of poor. These are both legacies of western civilization’s Judeo-Christian origins; unfortunately they have been hijacked by the Left for the purposes of expanding government power.
The main reason it is so difficult to define “poor” is because we are people, not animals.…You see, it is relatively easy to define poverty in an animal. Say an elephant requires sixty pounds of vegetation each day to remain healthy. Say a lion requires twenty pounds of meat. If either animal receives less than this, it can safely be regarded as poor. They each have less than they need. However, if you speak of what a person needs you start sounding a bit like Karl Marx, who felt that communism would provide all a person really needs. His spiritual heirs discovered that Karl erred. People’s ability to produce is finite and limited by their strength, ability, and life span. People’s needs, on the other hand, can be infinite. While all individual animals of a species are pretty much alike, no two humans are alike. It is simply not possible to speak of human’s needs. In my case religious education for my children and a boat for me are real needs. I do not need a large care or a fancy house. I do need not have to work on Saturdays. Other people establish what their own needs are.…
There is one additional complication in trying to speak of people’s needs. We all have limitless desires. This does not mean we are unable to live comfortably within our means, or that we go through life gnawed by discontent. Nonetheless, we would all know what to do with a large inheritance if it were to come our way. In Africa, I have seen lions utterly ignore a heard of impala dear idly standing by. The deer seemed quite indifferent to the lion and he to them. This was because he had recently eaten dinner and would not have known what do do with the windfall. He rightly reasoned that he could always catch an impala when he was again hungry. Humans are not like that . Our desires are always ahead of our means to fulfill them. To put it directly, wealth and poverty to animals are absolutes; to humans, they are comparatives. An animal either has what it needs or it does not. Since animals are entirely material, establishing their needs is simple. Once you have established the needs of one average-sized family dog, you have established it for most similar dogs. Not so with people whose needs sometimes go way beyond merely staying alive. One person’s needs may be quite different from another’s.
Rabbi Lapin is right, and his insights help us to see how social justice crusaders, when they appeal to needs, also can be emotionally manipulative. Their use of the term justice is a great example. Just as we’ve already said, social justice isn’t really about justice, but about forced redistribution of wealth.
Indented portions represent the words of
Rabbi Daniel Lapin in America’s Real War: An Orthodox Rabbi Insists that Judeo-Christian Values Are Vital for Our Nation’s Survival, (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1999), 246-248.
Visit Rabbi Lapin’s website at https://rabbidaniellapin.com.