In terms of exciting the big, dumb beast of extreme belief, it was a nearly perfect newspaper story.

It ran in the paper for which I work as a reporter, and briefly, it announced a program designed to provide computer access for low-income families. The local cable company, upon proof of poverty, will give families a $149.99 voucher for an inexpensive computer and Internet access for $9.95 a month, with no increases and no activation fee.

This being 2012 America, where many people are offended by the idea that poor people get to eat regularly, the article caused a veritable teacup worth of tempest.

The "comments" section under the story was festooned gaily with the words "freeloaders," "baby mamas," "welfare bums" and, of course, the names "Obama" and "Romney."

More than any one phrase or word, however, the comments section was decorated with certainty, absolute, pure knowledge that the speaker is right and everyone else is wrong and bent on "destroying America."

Gives me the creeps, that kind of certainty, particularly when it is directed at people who are sometimes too poor to afford as much food as they need. Oh, I know, the certain will bellow at me that the poor are literally buried in food, what with all the socialist "gimme" programs that literally thrust lobster down the throats of the broke.

And lemme guess, you've got a story to tell about this one time when you were in the grocery store and the person in front of you was buying steak and lobster (it's ALWAYS steak and lobster) with an EBT card. Having seen that, how could you help but be certain?

Me, I'm not so certain. A decades' long course of living among, writing about, hanging out with and sometimes dating the very poor has convinced me that, shocking as it sounds, poverty is no picnic. I believe that being poor is a very hard job, which is why so many people don't do it very well.

And I know how to write a column saying that Internet access is a luxury, not a necessity and that showering stupid drug addicts and their usually illegitimate children with free computers just encourages a culture of dependency, and anyway, once I was in line at the grocery store, and the woman in front of me had a fresh manicure, and she was using an EBT card to pay for her groceries. I've read that particular newspaper column so many times that I can sing it to the tune of "America the Beautiful."

And I can write the sniffly, yet uplifting column about how providing free computers might just encourage little Janey or little Tyreese to go on the Internet and discover new knowledge, knowledge that will inevitably propel this child of the housing projects into, if not the Oval Office, then at least into steady employment as a medical records transcriptionist. I've read that newspaper column so often that I can sing it to the tune of nearly any folk song you'd like to pick.

"You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything," they tell me. That's a dandy phrase because it makes you sound tough and it excuses you from the dreary necessity of thinking things through as they happen.

Believe one thing hard enough, and that belief will make all your decisions for you. Mother Teresa of Calcutta knew that. So did Adolf Hitler.

Increasingly, newspaper columnists are paid to believe, not to think, which is why so much repetitive yawp gets printed. This is comforting for some readers, who want to hear someone shout what they have only dared to whisper.

No fair cheating, though. I can't write 700 words and not say whether I think the poor people should get the free computer.

I think they should, but not because I'm liberal or conservative or because I believe in the risen Christ or in gay marriage or in other currently popular standard of certainty.

I'd give the poor people the computers because, in China, the government sits on the Internet to keep their own people down and because some Arab people used their computers to ignite a rebellion. At a time when the American governing classes (Democrat and Republican) sound more and more like the partially communist, all-oppressive people who run China and the religious zealots who run half the Arab world, I am in favor of the rebellious voice.

And I'm pretty certain that's because I'm an American.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.