Bloggette Wise-Fawn generates immense controversy on the JoeUser site because of her indefatigable defense of government-assistance programs designed for those in permanent or temporary need. Most of the comments against her views come from those who are not in need and exhibit a lack of “compassionate conservatism” for those who have primarily been victimized by circumstances beyond their control. Their arguments as a rule are from the vantage point of “If I can make a living for myself without government assistance, why can’t ‘those people’?”
The term "Social programs," takes on a demeaning connotation in the mind-set of the right because of its New Deal origin. Welfare in its inarguable purity is for those who qualify for financial assistance where and when exists variable degrees of helplessness — either mentally, physically or economically. Of course, there are always the professional schemers to come up with ways to beat the system in its aim to live off government hand-outs for a lifetime just as there are Wall Street brokers who churn accounts for their own gain, or small and large businesses that fail to report tax revenue whether state or federal. Why, then, should one expect purity in a government system? Crime knows no bounds. Yet overall, systems are generally honest.
Somehow, though, there is an invectiveness in self-styled pundits when it comes to poor people, especially those young victims of early sexual awakening by a pimping, unscrupulous environment prone to amoral activities. Yes, single mothers, who have been cut off from natural growth to achieve a sense of equality and dignity, are victimized by a male group that never heard of, let alone practiced, the art of chivalry. To these men and boys the female is but a flower to be trampled on — a behavior that cannot be condoned. Nevertheless, it says something about the America we live in today: tolerance to a point of saccharine “boys will be boys” and thus proliferation of anarchy toward women.
The mass exodus to the suburbs meant abandonment of good public education for the cities, leaving in its wake children of the poor to learn the hard knocks of the street, rather than through acculturation of solid classroom instruction. In conjunction with this move, policemen were taken off the streets and placed in patrol cars to seal the alienation of the “shiftless.” Absentee landlords let their assets fall apart, causing tenants to lose pride in their dwellings and themselves.
Welfare as we know it is testimony to the betrayal by the middle class and a Draconian government impervious to real and honest solutions.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: March 16, 2004.