Mark Steyn’s recent contribution to NRO’s page is an exercise in (a) guilt by association, by way of (b) rampant speculation. The ultimate payoff is to criticize the food stamp program. Here’s how the line of argument goes:
[The House Audit and Oversight Committee] are now trying to discover whether the Tsarnaev brothers used [Food Stamp EBT cards] to pay for the Boston Marathon bombing
OK. So where it stands is: we don’t know if they did. But there’s an investigation into the funding. Ah, so we might have, in providing a safety net for millions, provided the means for a lunatic fringe to build a bomb from household and cooking supplies. (Pressure cookers.) Maybe.
Ah, but all the ‘maybes’ in the world won’t hold Steyn back.
Paying Islamic terrorists to blow you up is more like assisted suicide.
And… Scene.
Earlier in the post, Steyn complained about the fact that the EBT cards had been used to buy porn, piercings, and manicures. Add funding terrorist attacks to the list. (Maybe.) Well, that’s enough to be up in arms about the welfare state — we, as Steyn sees it, not only encourage dependence, but irresponsibility and wantonness with welfare. And terrorism. (Maybe.)
Oh, and Steyn’s analogy is flawed: in providing the minimal means to live to the Tsarnaevs, we weren’t paying for them to blow us up. We were paying for them to survive and eventually prosper. That they used that generosity against us is simply more testament to the fact that their minds were infected with hate — they were aggressive toward a society and state that had showed them some consideration. We didn’t deserve that. Would Steyn’s alternative be that because we don’t want that, we’ll cut off all those other people welfare helps? I’m pretty sure that’s the plan.
