The Poor..The Defenseless.. Who Cares? By John Longnecker
The fact is that we do not care about the poor.
And neither do the liberals. The Democrats use the poor, the conservatives leave them alone and are labeled as not caring. Where is the real crime in this?
Speaking for myself, I would rather be left alone than be used. I would presume that, if given the choice, others would choose being left alone, too.
One of the best dignities one can acknowledge in another is confidence in them and respecting their freedom. Sometimes a lot of the time this is portrayed intentionally as not caring, but what if it were so?
What if it were true that nobody cares about the poor?
Who would it be up to then? Who would care?
They would, of course, one might expect ... or starve.
You see, dont get me wrong: I care. I care about individuals, I care about groups, but what happens next when we begin to care more than the individual cares about himself?
This is the result.
Dependency. Not on me or not on you per se, but on something other than oneself, namely, officials.
There are those who use the poor in breeding dependency and frustrating the poors chances for independence.
Where is the crime then?
Same place it was last time.
I would rather be left alone than made dependent. And when you resist dependency, youre branded today as conservative, hostile and ..well, you feel it.
Conservative, yes. But whos being hostile?
The cat was out of the bag in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where generations of dependency was unearthed and aggravated throughout the incident by the misplaced dependency on local assets which had failed the people on various levels. It failed them years ago.
Three levees of the entire system had failed with overtoppings of 13 - 17 feet to eventually break them, which levees should have been better maintained over the years. They were neglected. They caved.
Responses to that inundation should have been carried out by local assets immediately. They were not, as political squabbling and self-doubt froze leadership action. In some reports, according even to a
National Geographic Special aired November 6th, 2005, there was so much confusion and chaos reportedly no "SOS Button" to Washington and no real action that the response of FEMA was made so very much harder.
To the trained eye, this was no surprise.
Blaming FEMA for the depth of the tragedy is like blaming the Red Cross for your house burning down. The Red Cross is not the Fire Department. Neither is FEMA.
A known total of 259 officers bailed and left their posts in the first hours of the inundation. Others were trapped and couldnt make it in. Those on watch were swamped, literally. Assets approaching the state line were turned back, because, according to the Mayor, he didnt want people meeting each other coming and going, whatever that means. Then the means of self-defense was confiscated.
Brilliant.
This is what happens when one party has the philosophy of leaving people alone and the other breeds dependency as part of its philosophy (and then accuses the other of indifference).
If the truth be known,
nobody cares, and this is not an indictment, it is a fact of life.
We care in time of horrors of disaster, and according to some reports from Guardsmen on scene, the humanitarian outpouring of relief materials from private contribution exceeded that of 9-11.
But, in general, as a philosophy distinguishing the parties, over-caring (or saying that one cares in lip service) hurts others when it compels them to abandon their own resourcefulness.
Another example is the tragic choice made by the City of San Francisco overnight, the decision to ban guns from the territory.
From
The San Francisco Chronicle,
November 9th, 2005, Proposition H, which requires city residents who already own guns to turn them in to police by April 1st, 2006, was winning 58 percent to 42 percent with 98 percent of precincts counted.
The measure also makes it illegal to buy, sell, distribute and manufacture firearms and ammunition in the city.
Only two other cities in the country -- Washington, D.C., and Chicago -- have similar bans.Brilliant.
D.C. is the murder Capitol of the country and Chicagos not so far behind. Great models.
Gun owners knew the lessons of New Orleans generations before the levees broke. We know very well the fate of San Francisco now, too, as there is positively no provision for confiscating weapons from the bad guys, only from the good guys. Its a pity that voters there dont view themselves as good guys and bad guys as bad guys. To them, conservatives are the bad guys.
Brilliant.
The San Francisco Police Officers Association issued a statement of its position, and that was that Proposition H was going to be hard on the citizens right to self-defense and hard on the Department who may have to go and collect those weapons. [
April 1st, 2006 is the day for all fools to turn in their weapons.]
Im not yet convinced that the ban will take, what with legal challenges and so on, but I am interested in just how the interim environment between actual implementation and effects will be endured. Violent crime will probably rise, but will they make the connection?
Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, and someone with a gun or knife in his face or frighteningly strong hands on his throat or generally observing an increasing murder rate may
never make the connection between his vote to disarm and the criminals feeling freer to have his way. It cant be that they rang the dinner bell for thugs, it has to be because thugs are poor. ...or something.
Anything but the fact that the law-abiding surrendered their weapons and made it known.
Dependency masquerading as compassion
sounds good, but in its various forms including keeping the poor poor and getting people to turn in their weapons
its killing the country.
Breeding dependency - through deleterious programs and through confiscation of weapons - puts the 'K' in Kalifornia. This is no reference to the Governor, it is a reference to the Liberals who oppose the Governor.
Its time to throw dependency out the window as a value in America and a political tool. It is not help, and it is certainly not compassion. It is pure political victimization.
And one party does not believe in dependency.
One party does.
http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/longenecker/2005/11/poorthe-defenseless-who-cares.html.
