The poor people I've known have, for the most part (there are, of course, exceptions), been willing to work their ass off. Many of them do, but it just doesn't seem to help. As someone once put it, "Getting to the Olympics requires natural skill and hard work, but winning a gold medal is luck". The same goes for athletes, rock stars and small businessmen. The poor are very familiar with the role of luck. The rich think it never applies to them. They are just better than the rest of us.

Oh sure, people who are well off and successful are usually hardworking, ambitious and smart, (again, there are exceptions, of course, but they are the exceptions that make the rule). However, it doesn't work both ways. There are lots of people who work themselves to death and still don't get anywhere. And there are folks who were short-changed in the smarts or luck department through no fault of their own. And luck and smarts tend to help most those who can afford a Plan B, or whose Daddy could.

But the idea that the poor, or the "unskilled workers", or "unemployed" are that way is because they WANT to be that way, or because they expect a free ride off the well-off, or they feel entitled to what "we have worked so hard for", is a malicious slander promoted by those who are full of their own self-importance and virtue.

You can tell because when the rich fall on hard times, or even suspect that hard times might be heading their way, they never claim that they have suddenly become stupid, or lazy , or unambitious or greedy or even unlucky. Its always someone elses fault, like the Socialists, or the Jews, or the blacks, or the foreigners, or the unions, or the Liberals.

Everybody is passionate about liberty, Conservatives didn't invent it. And liberty is meaningless without prosperity, peace and justice.