Blogs For Victory

Getting rather Great Depression-y out there:

As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.

“They just popped up about 18 months ago,” Mr. Stack said. “One day it was empty. The next day, there were people living there.”

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

No, Mr. President, that isn’t it at all – what is wrong here is that people are living out in tents at all, whether it be in a rich or poor nation. It should be no comfort to us were we able to house every single American and yet still have our brothers and sisters living in tents and shacks in other lands. What this represents is not so much poverty as social breakdown.

Now, to be sure, the bulk of the homeless are either shiftless or mentally deficient – in other words, people you can’t so much ask to come off the street as people you should take off the street because they have proven themselves incapable of taking an adult’s place in the world. But especially as our economy has declined more and more people who are hard-working find themselves living out of doors. For a moment, you should put yourself in their shoes – you’ve lost your job due to the plant shutting down, lost your house because the landlord went bankrupt, lost your savings because the stock market crashed…you are out on the streets with your wife and two children and, really, its not your fault. If you suddenly found yourself in this position, how would you feel if someone came up to you and said, “brother, you’re in need – come to my house; it will be a tight fit, but if we all cooperate we can live together until you are back on your feet”?

I think, in that situation, you’d be mighty pleased – but, now, think about it from the point of view you have now: you’re the person with the house and you’ve got that extra bedroom since the kid went off to college. You’d like to turn it into that game room you’ve always wanted…but now you know about homeless people who really are caught in a jam not of their own making. What are you willing to do?

I realize that I’m being entirely unfair here – I mean, some random family off the streets might be a family of thieves or who knows what. To just take someone in on faith that God will provide what is needed and ensure that, come what may, good will emerge from your act of generosity is a bit of a leap – especially in 2009, after we’ve been conditioned for a century to believe we don’t have a direct responsibility for our brothers and sisters and that, really, its better to not get involved and doesn’t Catholic Charities and such take care of these things? But it is our problem – and it is all part of our social breakdown.

And therein lies the fundamental flaw of Obamunism – he’s just going down the same path to social destruction we’ve been following for far too long. We need to pull together as a community – Obama pays lip service to this, but his real goal is the naked individual being ministered to by an all-powerful government. He doesn’t want people who are well off heading to the poor areas to help out – if people do that, they’ll start becoming a solid, functioning (and, by the way, self organized) community. And then where is the need for Obama and the government?

Out there in our increasingly impoverished America grow these shanty towns – called “Hoovervilles” in the 30’s, but rightly called “Obamavilles” today because it is what Obama wants: people suffering and with only the government to help them. Fear not, says Obama, all will be taken care of – and like braying asses, his liberal followers are thrilled that the poor will be helped…and without liberal asses actually having to get out there and deal with those icky poor people who are unfashionably dressed and smell funny and aren’t nearly as cool close up as they are in a heart-rending documentary.

Wake up, people – your brothers and sisters need your help; don’t leave them to the misbegotten ministrations of Big Government. Help them, yourselves.