The Soul Sickness of the GOP

The House passage of a vivisected farm bill last week — dropping SNAP assistance (Food Stamps) in order to get enough conservatives to sign on– deserves all the contempt that can be mustered.  It’s hard to believe such votes don’t give an opening to run candidates against those who cast them.  Some who voted these sadists into office must realize that they, themselves, are suffering because of the what is going on.

“Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.

The occasion for these observations is, as you may have guessed, the monstrous farm bill the House passed last week.”

Paul Krugman

These believers in the great market economy and the invisible hand to take care of everything do not know their Adam Smith of course, knowing only what they want to know.  It was Smith who described exactly what it is these GOPers have forgotten:

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. … Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.”