A Modest Proposal

<p>Jonathan Swift thought that England's anti-poverty proposals were so outrageously evil that nothing short of an absurd parody of them would suffice.  His "Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the publick" is presented with a completely straight face.  The irony is this: in the three centuries since humanity has made it increasingly difficult to find evils so absurd that no one would actually attempt them leaving modern-day Swifts with little material to work with anymore.</p>