“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
These two maxims of generations past sought to curb ingratitude, a sense of entitlement, or even cultivated taste amongst those dependent on the kindness of others — thus preventing the poor from making the best the enemy of the adequate.
But today beggars and gift-horse recipients have the government to look out for them.
Todd Starnes, writing for Fox News, relates the story of the Louisiana Health and Hospitals Department nixing a generous gift of sixteen hundred pounds of venison to a rescue mission:
“Deer meat is not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana,” said a Health Dept. official in an email to Fox News. “While we applaud the good intentions of the hunters who donated this meat, we must protect the people who eat at the Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow a potentially serious health threat to endanger the public.”
Another valiant attempt to “help” those worst off in society.
Sarcasm aside, the Louisiana venison was no random benefaction. The hunters had been officially encouraged to hunt, and to donate extra meat, which then went to a processing plant.
But the government, which is here to help us (or so it is said), stepped in. The bureaucrats could have inspected the meat, but, instead, even went out of their way to throw the meat into garbage bins and douse it with Clorox.
Just so no animals would get sick, either.
A predictable result of the way Americans have chosen to “protect”* the food supply. As in so many other areas, it is always the poor (in this case, the homeless) who are hurt the most.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The full story has yet to really come out. The beneficent hunters have met with a number of government attorneys and professional backpedallers, and have been promised to be informed of the exact laws/regulations that the venerable venison donors allegedly broke. And this loose-knit diet of dignitaries plans to cook up legislation to “make sure this never happens again.”