Over at Mother Jones, lefty extremist Kevin Drum wrote an insulting piece of tripe called “Helping the Poor is Now Apparently Anti-Bible“. Apparently, Drum took umbrage at a statement pastor Rick Warren made on ABC’s This Week:

Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor….But there’s a fundamental question on the meaning of “fairness.” Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money? I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation.

The only way to get people out of poverty is J-O-B-S. Create jobs. To create wealth, not to subsidize wealth. When you subsidize people, you create the dependency. You — you rob them of dignity.

After admitting that he agrees with Warren’s sentiment, Drum gets nasty:

But I’m a blogger, not a minister. And while I might not be an expert on the Bible, I’ve read enough to know that Jesus sure didn’t seem to think that helping the poor robbed them of dignity. Can someone help me out here? What part of the gospels do you think Warren is referring to?

It’s extremely difficult to have a discussion with someone like this, someone who is deliberately misleading about Warren’s point and ignores the definition of English words. But I think I can help Drum.

I’m no big Rick Warren fan, but I can see no reason to insult him as Drum does. Warren never said helping the poor robbed someone of their dignity. In fact, Warren explicitly lays out what robs poor people of their dignity, government subsidies; and, Warren is right. Having the poor stay on the dole for scraps, a policy supported by Democrats for the last 45 years, since the days of LBJ’s Great Society, is not help. The statistics bear this out:

But according to Drum, “helping the poor” means having the government give out scraps of taxpayer dollars forever. Maybe Drum should take a look at the data that proves him wrong before he bears false witness against and insults a Christian minister, a minister who, by Drum’s admission, is more of an expert on the Bible.

The answer, then, to Drum’s question:

What part of the gospels do you think Warren is referring to?

is a question to Drum. Drum says he’s read enough of the gospels “to know that Jesus sure didn’t seem to think that helping the poor robbed them of dignity.” The question to Drum is, since he’s read enough of them, what part of the gospels says Jesus supports the government endlessly giving scraps of taxpayer dollars to the poor, subsidies the poor can collect only if they don’t work?

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.