R emember the fable of old where the ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter? And the grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Then comes winter, the ant is warm and well fed

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

The moral of the story: Be responsible for yourself.

Editor’s Note: This story (that has been going around in Republican online circles) was sent in by our contributor, Mike Kolberg, who made some changes in collaboration with this editor.

H ere is the modern version, apparently according to some Democrats:

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 shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while others are cold and starving.

The 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.

The editorial writers of both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ask: “How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer?”

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

The ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” The Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King 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.

T he story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while he stays comfortably at the government-provided house, which just happens to be the ant's old house, which crumbles because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

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 once-peaceful neighborhood.

The reader is invited to draw for himself or herself the lesson from the new Democratic-style parable . . . # # #