Opinion

Don’t we need a food-stamp prez?

Some think Newt Gingrich scored by calling Barack Obama the “food-stamp president,” but isn’t it really a compliment?

Obama tried to get everyone jobs — he even had the surefire plan of spending hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money — but it turns out, making lots of new jobs is really, really hard. Who knew?

But Obama was easily able to relax the requirements for receiving food stamps and increase the program’s benefits. So now if you can’t get a job, it doesn’t matter, because you still get to eat.

But how do people react to seeing millions more on food stamps? It’s not the logical, “Yay — look at all the new people I get to help with my tax dollars!” No, it’s irrational yelling about all the extra people dependent on government. To which I ask: What’s so wrong with being dependent on government?

Of all the things to depend on, isn’t government the smartest choice? You could depend on yourself, but come on. You know yourself; you fail all the time. You could depend on your friends and family, but they’d eventually get sick of you. But government will always love you and always be there. Long after you’re dead and forgotten, there will be government.

Without government, what would take care of people? Charity? Charity was a cute idea back when Jesus thought it up millions of years ago, but now it’s just another outdated idea conservatives like to cling to.

For one thing, it has a fatal flaw: What if people choose not to be charitable? That’s the advantage of government — it has no choice. It will take what it determines it needs and help everyone as much as it thinks it should.

These aren’t regular people helping others, but professionals who exist only to help others: bureaucrats. Really, who would you rather take care of you? Cold, self-interested individuals or a warm, caring government?

Speaking of Jesus, can’t we all appreciate the miracle Obama has worked? Much like with Jesus and the loaves, Obama has taken the fewer jobs that exist now and made sure everyone still gets fed.

Perhaps we’ve all looked at this economy the wrong way. We keep wanting everyone to get jobs, but maybe not everyone needs one. Shouldn’t our goal be to keep everyone fed and cared for with fewer people actually needing to work?

Perhaps one day, pretty much no one will work and we can just force a few selfish, workaholic rich people to pay for everything.

A good analogy for the rich is a pinata. You just keep whacking them and they drop treats for all of us forever and ever. Like a pinata. Yet this could all be ruined by the crazy people out there who want to shrink government, and thus reduce its ability to care for us.

Another advantage of people being dependent on government is that it causes people to protect that government from harm. The dependents will form a shield for the government against cuts — not a shield of wood or metal, but a shield of people. A people shield. Protecting government and its bureaucrats.

That’s another reason all the complaining about expanded food stamps is foolish: You have no choice. You can’t stop the government-dependency juggernaut, an unbeatable feat of social engineering. So stop working so hard and worrying so much about the economy. Relax. Have some food stamps.

Political satirist Frank J. Fleming’s e-book, “Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything,” is out from HarperCollins.