Michael Medved's column yesterday contains excellent insight on today's culture of wealth-bashing and liberals' never-ending quest for victimhood.
In the column, he points to Leviticus 19:15 which says, "You shall not commit a perversion of justice: you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great, with righteousness shall you judge your fellow."
It should, indeed, come as a revelation and a rebuke to all liberals that Holy Scripture identifies 'favoring the poor' as 'a perversion of justice.'
Medved goes on to clarify:
Concerning the crucial sentence, Rabbi SchlomoYitzhaki (Rashi), the great 11th Century sage commented: "'You shall not favor the poor' means that you should not say that a wealthy man is obligated to help the poor, therefore it is proper for a judge to rule in favor of the poor litigant. Torah insists that justice be rendered honestly; as important as charity is, it must not interfere with justice."
What does this mean?
Leftists should take note: "loving your neighbor" doesn't involve protecting him against the just consequences of his own mistakes, or giving him special dispensation if he's unlucky, or punishing the productive in the name of helping the less fortunate.
A just and loving society, in other words, doesn't enshrine victimhood and doesn't see a contradiction between justice and compassion. Both are attributes of the living God but they shouldn't be confused.
So how about just seeking truth and justice, instead of bashing a particular cross-section of Americans in an attempt to elevate a different cross-section (otherwise known as class envy)?
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