The Ant And The Grasshopper
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FREE MARKET VERSION
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The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks
he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come
winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or
shelter so he dies out in the cold.
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SOCIALIST VERSION
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The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks
he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come
winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands
to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while
others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering
grasshopper next to video of the ant in his comfortable home with a
table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How
can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is
allowed to suffer so?
Then a representative of the NAGB (The National Association of
Green Bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with green
bias, and the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million
years of specieism. Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the
grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy
Being Green."
Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS
Evening News to tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do
everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the
prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the
Reagan summers. Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with
Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the
grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make
him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Specieism
Act" retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for
failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs. Having nothing
left to pay his retroactive taxes, the ant's home is confiscated by the
government.
Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a
defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel
of federal hearing officers that Bill appointed from a list of
single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday's
between 1:30 and 3PM. The ant loses the case.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of
the ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens
to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how
to maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the
grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing
Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Socialists
announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned.