Help! Mom! There's a Lao Tze Under My Bed!

Katharine DeBrecht, the author of conservative children's books including "Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed!" recently wrote a rather ridiculous column for the Green Bay Press Gazette titled America's liberals can't have it both ways. It's a typical conservative attack on a number of ridiculous straw-men. Here's an example.

The bit about two mommies is, of course, idiotic. But the fish story is especially interesting. For one thing, liberals are strong supporters of education and job training so, contrary to what she claims, they would strongly agree with the idea of teaching the man to fish. But that's not the most interesting part. What's interesting is that the quote about teaching a man to fish is not from the Bible, as this online Bible search shows. It has, however, often been attributed (perhaps incorrectly) to the Chinese mystic philosopher Lao Tze.
Perhaps this good conservative Christian woman needs to read more Bible and less Chinese mystic philosophy. :rofl:

On Edit: Changed some wording to indicate that the attribution to Lao Tze is uncertain.

I translated the DDJ a while back, and that phrase didn't appear, nor did anything like it. A google search backs me up, as does a ctrl-F on both my translation and a couple other ones. And just to be sure, a search on the original Chinese. I think it's one of those wise-sounding anonymous sayings that we like to attribute to famous people.

My Google search did find several instances of it being attributed to Laozi. but reading through that wikiquote page more closely I see that it implies that the attribution isn't really proven.

But it's still true that it is NOT from the bible.

Making up Bible quotes is ridiculous.

(sorry for the pedantry; as you might have surmised, I'm a bit of an amateur scholar when it comes to China)

I don't want to go around unknowingly spreading untruths. But it's a shame that Lao Tze (or Laozi, or whatever) didn't say it, because I was kind of proud of my subject line.

Lured me in, at any rate.

Running light without overbyte?

edit: IIRC, "Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia"

Jeeeeesus' 'daddy' wasn't that Joe guy, so he was hardly from a typical family of the time!!! He may not have had two mommies, but he didn't have a daddy to speak of!

This story amuses, though, because it illustrates the absolute certainty with which these Coulteresque asshats make completely bullshit pronouncements, and it also demonstrates how poorly educated they are, though they don't let a lousy education stop them from shooting off at the mouth!

burn the flag and smoke dope in her church'?

Stupid twat...

on a very famous occasion, when he also made some highly interesting remarks, which did NOT include learning to fish to eat for life.

that they pay him for it afterwards. It was just a credit-type thing. No payments for six weeks, you know how they do. He would never advocate charity.

The only writing we have concerning Lao Tzu is the Tao Te Ching. And according to legend it wasn't even penned by him but instead dictated to a guard as Lao left to place himself in self imposed exile. And I don't recall seeing anything like that in any of the translations of the Tao Te Ching.

It seems particularly addled of Ms. DeBrecht to overlook this particular facet of her other "Savior's" birth. She's probably insane.

Keep in mind there is an argument that the virgin birth thing is the result of a translation mistake. The word used to define Mary likely meant a young woman of marrying age. Not a virgin. Of course this issue is still quite controvercial so as I said, it depends on what you are reading.