FOOD STAMPS, THE GASBAGS AND EDMUND BURKE

Last night, I caught a little bit of the John Gibson radio show and someone called Spencer Hughes was the substitute host.   During the time I was listening, he seemed to be arguing  that because there was some fraud in the food stamp program, it should be eliminated.   This reminded me of a similar argument Mark Levin made about unemployment benefits.  This also reminded me of Edmund Burke's callous opinion of the working poor and his later opinion of any government aid in the case of famine.  He urges Parliament to:

...resist the very first idea, speculative or practical, that it is within the competence of Government, taken as Government, or even of the rich, as rich, to supply to the poor, those necessaries which it has pleased the Divine Providence for a while to with-hold from them. We, the people, ought to be made sensible, that it is not in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God, that we are to place our hope of softening the Divine displeasure to remove any calamity under which we suffer, or which hangs over us.