LETTER: Columnist is selfish, insensitive to the poor

Editor,

I am one of the people that Michael Carrasco would castigate as a "bleeding-heart liberal." I am from Massachusetts, I enjoy working at soup kitchens and I give money to people that need it more than I do. I am always grateful that I have the opportunity to live in a country that allows its residents to say whatever they want without fear of repercussions.

Yet, while I appreciate this liberty, I cannot help but abhor the selfishness that people like Michael Carrasco display with regularity and little remorse. Carrasco's column Tuesday about the redistribution of wealth in America saddened and sickened me.

First of all, I hope for his sake that he is aware that the Declaration of Independence is by no means a legal document and the claims to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are merely philosophy, not legal rhetoric. The Constitution was framed in the loosest possible terms, thereby allowing for all sorts of radical social changes - including levying high taxes on the rich.

However, what was of incredibly poor taste was your columnist's choice of words describing the poor if they happened to come into such newfound wealth:

"The act of creating wealth is one of discipline and one of making correct and responsible choices. When wealth is redistributed the virtues that go along with the accumulation of it are lost. What is left is a class of heirs to fortunes that redistributionists (sic) love to hate; this class would be totally bereft of the skills and the responsibilities that are necessary for making money. They would be juvenile tyrants, given to excess and eventually falling into contempt for those they were dependent on."

Carrasco's arrogance and elitism sickens me. The reasons these alleged undisciplined individuals are poor is not from their own inabilities to generate wealth, but because of individuals like your columnist who take more and more of the american pie - leaving the "undisciplined" to fight for the crumbs. It is people like Michael Carrasco who make people poor - in their fight to be wealthy and self-determined, individuals like Michael Carrasco create the people he quite obviously despises.

Through series of layoffs inspired by corporate greed, the people seen on the street begging for change were the same individuals that helped individuals like Michael Carrasco achieve such success. Are the poor the problem with America? Absolutely not, it is the people like Michael Carrasco who are the problem. Are the poor entitled to live in America with all the same liberties as the rich?

Absolutely - the 14th Amendment assures that the people, whom Carrasco has such thinly veiled hate for, get a fair shake. Is the redistribution of American wealth unfair? Not by a long shot; if Michael Carrasco was living out on the street, one can be sure that he too would be begging for spare change.

Philip Manzelli

Undergraduate exchange student, Catholic and bleeding-heart liberal