The United States (and some other countries as well) have an underlying streak of Calvinism. Without going into the details (easily found by Googling), it holds that since God is omnipotent (all knowing) He knows the future. Hence, He already knows who will deserve being saved and those who are irredeemable. So—(look out, sports fans, here it comes!!)—He favors, in this life, those who are already saved by showering them with wealth and success. And those who are "pre-Doomed?" Why bother with them? No favors. Let them sweat their lives away, and if they need to, grub for their dinner out of their local Dumpster. To Hell with them. Literally!

And how do we mere non-omnipotent mortals tell who's who? Obvious!

The Rich. And the Poor.

The predominant religious beliefs of a lot of Americans accounts for quite a bit of politics in this country, even among those who don't necessarily consider themselves religious. But among those who do, I wonder how these good churchgoing folk square this underlying belief with what Jesus says in Matthew 25:35-40.

Not to get involved in the religious can of worms, nevertheless, it makes an interesting contradiction. . . .

Thus, conservative Americans (including, for example, Tea Partiers, who, are themselves, not characteristically well-to-do, but are not bright enough to make the connedtions and realize that they're shooting themselves in the foot) use to justify the cutting of social programs to aid the poor, things like health care, public education, Social Security, and all those other things that people frequently find beyond their means, unlike the Koch brothers, who can pay for out of the pocket change they can dig out from under their sofa cushions.

Don Firth