(M)You...
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"You trample upon the poor!" "You turn aside the needy!" Those harsh denunciations, believe it or not, were spoken by a rough and ready herdsman who lived half a world and 2,700 years away. His name was Amos. He lived in Judah. He was called a prophet. Surely that prophet (excuse the redundancy!) was prophetic about our own time and place. A great debate has been going on in our nation's Capital about whether to cut food stamps, Social Security, welfare, School Lunch Programs, etc.... and apply the savings to MX missiles neutron bombs, and de-mothballing obsolete battleships. But don't cut the subsidies for the tobacco industry! How strange that we must economize on welfare for the poor but not economize on welfare payments to the rich, health-damaging tobacco industry! What would Amos say about that?!
According to columnist Ellen Goodman, our proposed national budget would eliminate Social Security payments for those 2,000,000 persons who are currently receiving the minimum amount of $122 per month (which figures out, she says, to seventeen cents per hour -- waking or sleeping). About 16,000 of those two million are over ninety-five years old, 500,000 over eighty, two-thirds over seventy, eighty-five percent are women. But our Secretary of Defense is reportedly (according to Newsweek magazine August 17, 1981) proposing to spend sixty-one billion dollars on an air launch program for the MX missile. What would Amos say about the contrast between such penurious treatment of the elderly and such generous provision for a very theoretical, exotic system for mass destruction? I think he might say what he said! Namely that "justice" has turned wormwood (5:7). Wormwood is a woody herb which yields bitter, slightly aromatic, green oil. Webster tells us that the word wormwood suggests "anything bitter or grievous." Would not the prophet say that the present state of our national financial priorities is "bitter" and "grievous"?!
-- Campbell
"You trample upon the poor!" "You turn aside the needy!" Those harsh denunciations, believe it or not, were spoken by a rough and ready herdsman who lived half a world and 2,700 years away. His name was Amos. He lived in Judah. He was called a prophet. Surely that prophet (excuse the redundancy!) was prophetic about our own time and place. A great debate has been going on in our nation's Capital about whether to cut food stamps, Social Security, welfare, School Lunch Programs, etc.... and apply the savings to MX missiles neutron bombs, and de-mothballing obsolete battleships. But don't cut the subsidies for the tobacco industry! How strange that we must economize on welfare for the poor but not economize on welfare payments to the rich, health-damaging tobacco industry! What would Amos say about that?!
According to columnist Ellen Goodman, our proposed national budget would eliminate Social Security payments for those 2,000,000 persons who are currently receiving the minimum amount of $122 per month (which figures out, she says, to seventeen cents per hour -- waking or sleeping). About 16,000 of those two million are over ninety-five years old, 500,000 over eighty, two-thirds over seventy, eighty-five percent are women. But our Secretary of Defense is reportedly (according to Newsweek magazine August 17, 1981) proposing to spend sixty-one billion dollars on an air launch program for the MX missile. What would Amos say about the contrast between such penurious treatment of the elderly and such generous provision for a very theoretical, exotic system for mass destruction? I think he might say what he said! Namely that "justice" has turned wormwood (5:7). Wormwood is a woody herb which yields bitter, slightly aromatic, green oil. Webster tells us that the word wormwood suggests "anything bitter or grievous." Would not the prophet say that the present state of our national financial priorities is "bitter" and "grievous"?!
-- Campbell
