So Republicans in the House of Representatives, facing the reality of the huge budget deficits they have created through tax-cuts and war-spending, have come up with a solution for narrowing the fiscal gap: take it from the poor and disabled.  Here’s an excerpt from today’s Washington Post:

Republicans began targeting key programs for budget cuts yesterday,
from student loans and health care to food stamps and foster care…
The House Ways and Means Committee today will begin drafting
legislation that would save about $8 billion over five years, eight
times the $1 billion target the panel was given in the spring. To do
it, Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) would cut back federal aid to state
child-support enforcement programs, limit federal payments to some
foster care families, and cut welfare payments to the disabled.

    Let’s say that again: cut welfare payments to the disabled.  Incredible.  As income inequality has grown in the US in recent years, with the rich taking home more than the poor, how is that these people can find any shred of justice in taking even more away from the poor.   I know: they do so because they are simply paying off their political sponsors and constituents.  The poor and disabled don’t vote in sufficient numbers and don’t have enough influence to defend their interests.  But that doesn’t make it right or just.  Quite the contrary, it is wrong and inhumane.  It also confirms the rather dark image of human nature described in the Tao Te Ching.

     Here’s an excerpt from passage number 77:

The Way of heaven takes away where there’s abundance
and restores where there’s want,
but the Way of humankind isn’t like that:
it takes away where there’s want
and gives where there’s abundance.

       "Heaven" here is not like a Christian heaven, a supra-human paradise where a god lives.  It simply means the unfolding destiny of the universe, with no reference to any god.  So, in general terms, Nature has an implicit process of justice: it takes away where there’s abundance and restores where there’s want.  Like water flowing down hill, or a mountain slowly eroding, or plants sprouting up in the spring, it pulls down the high and raises up the low.  That is the Taoist interpretation. 

     The "Way of humankind" contradicts this – and this is not to be taken as a compliment.  Elsewhere the text castigates the rich, who indulge themselves in luxuries while others go without food: "It’s vainglorious thievery…"  (passage 53). 

     And that is what the House Republicans are doing.   They are acting on the worst impulses of human nature: taking from the disadvantaged, while the privileged gain more and more.  It’s vainglorious thievery.