Pioneer Press | 01/08/2004 | When it comes to personal responsibility, it's better to share than to shed extra weight: "We are, after all, in this together. For the new year, we just have to take some personal responsibility -- for each other."

Ellen Goodman, like all liberals, just can't quite get it--can't quite understand why the rest of us are getting so fed up. I think it goes back to Cain and Abel. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain said, when God asked him where his brother was. [His brother was dead, lying in his own blood, which cried out to God].

Liberals and misinformed other sorts have been answering Cain's question with a resounding and guilt-ridden "Yes!!" ever since. Of course I am my brother's keeper, they say. And away they go, piously thinking that they need to "do something" for their brother, who is probably too stupid, or inept, or wicked, to do anything for himself. Requires taxes and regulations and transfers of power, however, to those who know what is best for their brother.

They have misunderstood Cain's question, of course. The answer to Cain's question goes something like this. "No of course not, you idiot. Your brother does not need a keeper and you are just using a stupid argument to change the subject and get the heat off yourself, because you are a murderer. God never required you to be your brother's keeper and your argument is stupid and degrading to your brother. Abel was getting along fine, blessed in his farming and happy in his God. It is your hand that laid him in the dust. You can't get off the hook by pretending that God laid some unreasonable demand upon you. Abel didn't need a keeper. Keepers are for animals and children. Abel was neither of those. You remind me of the child who, when asked to take out the trash, complains "Do I have to do everything around here?"

But away they go, little mothers wanting to take care of everybody, when really all they need to do is get out of the way and let Abel worship and work for the living God he serves and love. But of course, Cain never will. He has another agenda.

"But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. 11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core." (Jude 10-11).