The Samaritan’s Dilemma by Deborah Stone


book jacket with life saving ringThe Samaritan’s Dilemma: Should Government Help Your Neighbor?
by Deborah Stone (c 2008)

The Republicans have spent decades undermining democracy, notably, explicitly stated by St. Ronnie Reagan in his 1981 Inaugural Address:

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

In this simple paragraph he begins the ruthless demonization of the government of the people that he swore to serve and damned the “liberals” for yes, despite the phrasing, being ignorant as well as being delusional. His views have proven long since to have been a disaster for the country by independent thinking Americans. This is a man who bragged about how little (if anything) he read and zeroed out library funding every year of his administration’s budget. Fortunately, Congress put funding back in, but the clear and present danger to democracy represented by defunding the single most powerful force for an informed citizenry, public libraries, represents who the truly ignorant person was when he made that statement.

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