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An Enron energy-desk trader said “Burn Baby Burn” on a call with another of the company’s traders when a wildfire in California was putting some electric wires at risk.  The loss of the wires would have decreased supply, and thus jacked up the cost of electricity, which Enron would provide.  Similarly, the phrase can be applied to the South Fulton, Tennessee, fire department, when its men watched Gene Cranick’s home burn to the ground because he had not paid the $75 annual fee that residents outside of city limits must pay in order to receive the “service.”  When he called 911, he was told that he was not on the list. The fire department came out to protect his neighbor’s house, then watched as fire gutted Cranick’s house. Fortunately, no one was killed in the blaze.  Had there been a death involved, I wonder if those firemen who watched could be charged with manslaughter.  Cranick offered to pay the fee on the spot, but the fire department rightly pointed out that if it allowed that practice, the only people who would pay the fee would be those whose houses are on fire.  However, we might ask whether setting or maintain such a precedent is so important that someone loses their home or even a loved one.

Were any of the firefighters Christian, it would be an odd approach to the faith to say that one should turn the other cheek in the sense of looking away from harm.  It is the person who stops to help the injured person at the side of the road who is the true follower of Jesus, as per his example and teachings. Little love was lost between the Jews and Samaritans, but Jesus had the latter rather than the Jewish rabbi as the man of God in stopping to help the man in distress.  Surely pleading a precedent would not have excused those who walked passed the man.

Beyond the religious angle, there is the matter of one’s shelter being treated as a commodity that can be lost if a fee is not paid.  If we do indeed have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as Americans, then the right to life must surely include sustenance needs.  Basic shelter, utilities, food and medical care are germane to the right to living, and yet something as simple as not paying a fee or losing one’s job can suddenly render the basics beyond one’s reach. To those who would cite the added cost to the taxpayer, one could argue that a sustenance-only approach to entitlements could save money not just in terms of lower insurance and emergency-room losses, but also from the ending of corporate welfare and tax-deductions that are go beyond sustenance. Calling for an end to unemployment compensation, for example, while corporate welfare continues (including to defense contractors) evinces priorities that I’m not sure anyone would want to own up to, at least in public. Yet the argument is made by some.

Beyond whether government ought to see that no citizen is deprived of sustenance needs as a matter of rights, one might ask whether the insecurity that treating basic needs as commodities to be provided by private companies for a fee should be something we tolerate.  In other words, imagine how much more secure life would be for all of us if we knew that we could not fall through the cracks. Even if a person doesn’t think he or she could face the loss of shelter or health-care, the good Samaritan would not want to see anyone else even have to worry about not being able to survive.  If people in a society are not willing to guarantee at least the basics to themselves and their fellow citizens, is that society simply an aggregate of self-centered (and short-sighted) people?  To such a “society,” I would find myself joining in the chant, “Burn Baby Burn.”

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/