The Ant and the Grasshopper

[Mtn.man]

OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is 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.


MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!




MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is 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 he is cold and starving..

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.


America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green ...'

Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome.

Then Rev Al Sharpton's assistant has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper while he damns the ants. The Reverend Al can not attend as he has contractual commitments to appear on his MSNBC show for which he is paid over two million dollars a year to complain that rich people do not care.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight….
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview on The View that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and,
having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken
over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood. The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest
of the free world with it.

[Mtn.man]

Yes but the bottom line is for 2014...

[hollohas]

The REALLY old version

Proverbs 6:6-11

Go to the ant, you lazybones;
   consider its ways, and be wise. 
Without having any chief
   or officer or ruler, 
it prepares its food in summer,
   and gathers its sustenance in harvest. 
How long will you lie there, O lazybones?
   When will you rise from your sleep? 
A little sleep, a little slumber,
   a little folding of the hands to rest, 
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
   and want, like an armed warrior.

[kidicarus13]

Its too bad more ants don't see the writing on the wall.

[sabot_round]

Its too bad more ants don't see the writing on the wall.

There are more grasshoppers than ants.

[OtterbatHellcat]

I hate grasshoppers.

[blacklabel]

There's going to come a day when the .gov won't be able to do jack for the grasshopper. Ants, stock up like your life depends on it, because it does.

[Gman]

Grasshoppers make good bait.

[wctriumph]

I had a deep fried grass hopper once. That was enough for me.

[Skip]

There are more grasshoppers than ants.

Because their population has been nurtured by gov.

But if these grasshoppers are so incompetent as not to be able (if we are to believe their need) to feed themselves, how can they be a threat? They are only a threat to the ants because the ants allow it foolishly thinking that they will be able to keep enough for themselves.

The grasshopper problem would resolve itself if the ants would cut them off. They would either have to behave more like ants or face starvation.

Yes, the morality here would be debated. But is it more just that everyone starve?