Evolution for me

But not for thee:

State Rep. Mary Franson has apologized and removed a YouTube video that compared Minnesota’s food stamp program to “feed(ing) the animals.” It started Friday, when Franson, a first-term Republican from Alexandria, posted a week-in-review video on YouTube. She ran through the news about the new state budget forcast(sic) and ended with a plea to end child sexual abuse. In between, at about the two-minute mark, she turned to the welfare reform:

“I'll read you this little funny clip that we got from a friend. It says, 'Isn't it ironic that the food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps, ever. Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to please not feed the animals, because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves."

...The Alliance for a Better Minnesota has launched a petition drive, demanding that Franson make another video – this one, an apology for her last video. 

Why in the world should she apologize? For comparing humans to animals? It seems to me that a bedrock principle of modern biology is that humans are animals.  It is so basic, in fact, that larval academics* will go out of their way to ignorantly mock bestiality laws because, well, you can't outlaw sex with animals without outlawing sex with humans.  It's science.

Now, it's an established fact that if you feed animals, they will grow dependent upon that food. To the extent that food is free and plentiful, they will even change their lives and habits to enjoy its benefit. My little brother has a freezer full of venison that proves what dropping a few apples in front of your archery blind can do**. Some animals will grow so dependent on such manna from heaven that they will starve if that food supply is ever cut off.

On the other hand, FDR probably thought nothing of animal husbandry when he said in his 1935 State of the Union address that, "The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers. The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief."*** If you feed people, with no effort on their part, it brings about spiritual and moral disintegration. In short, it fosters dependence. One might even say it creates ready-made prey that fills the freezers of federal poverty workers****.

So how to explain this coincidental intersection of action and reaction?  Why is it that food given to animals and food given to the poor can bring about the same result? A scientist might conclude that since humans are animals, similar actions might bring about the same results.  But outraged lefties think that drawing such a comparison is an insult. 

 I guess all of us evolved from animals, and remain animals, except the poor. Where they came from, no one knows.

 *"Andrew is a graduate student in North Carolina studying population and conservation genetics in hydrothermal vent communities." I kid you not.
** Swear to God. He'd been telling me for years - years of getting his a deer via bow "in minutes on opening day" - about this great spot he had.  Finally I saw it. It was a great spot indeed - a camouflaged  pill box 15' from a huge pile of apples. He could have killed his prey with a large pipe wrench.
*** Obviously he was kidding about that last part.
**** As federal highway workers work to create highways, federal poverty workers...