Concern for the unfortunate

Nonsense - even in politics - can also make you laugh. Take today’s example:

Of course what Tories really think is that there *is* a correlation between poverty and the riots. They think the poor are subhuman scum.

In isolation, your typically silly comment, but when followed up with...

The riots are in large part caused by inequality and poverty. Not because poor are inferior people.

...it becomes unintentionally amusing. But just in case you were unsure, there was this beauty - the unquestioned cornerstone of so many arguments - a few moments later:

...origins of Conservatism lie in hating poor.

What a tweet. That a party would be identified as openly antagonistic to a large section of the electorate - whose votes it requires - shall remain one of the great mysteries, and all the more remarkable for being the view of someone with a first-rate (well, far better than mine) education. To believe that good and (for want of a better word) evil, can be so neatly aligned with left and right-wing ideology is astonishingly simple and self-serving. There is, I’m sure, a larger debate around the correlation (or lack of) between education, politics and morality; for now I shall confine myself to wondering how someone so intelligent can say something so foolish, and elude the inconvenient truth of Hubert Humphrey:

Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.