« You think gas prices are high now? | Home | CR Composition Corner »
Homeless for a night
By sage of monticello | August 30, 2007
A homeless advocacy group is challenging all Democrat Presidential candidates to sleep on the streets for one night in order to bring to their attention just how the other half lives…
[a] challenge laid down this month by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), a non-profit advocacy organization, to all of the announced candidates in the 2008 contest for president [is] to spend a night as a homeless person. None accepted the invitation; in fact, only Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama — who introduced a bill in April that would provide more housing for homeless veterans — responded to the group, and he demurred, citing scheduling conflicts.
Rule: Democrats only say what they must to get elected. Democrats really don’t want to “help” the poor, they only want to seem like they want to in order to get votes.
And let’s not forget that their term for “help” really isn’t help, because increasing federal funding for housing will only make more people dependent on government, in addition to increasing the level of addiction of those already receiving HUD funding.
I assume that this stunt is, in the long run, intended to increase federal housing funding for the poor. However, good a goal helping those less fortunate then us might be (and it is a duty to help the poor), it in no way necessarily implicates government.
Philosophically speaking, the poor can be just as effectively helped by private charity then by public governmental institutions. Government doesn’t have to be the answer nor should it be.
Proving that theory correct then are measures of the efficiency of government relative to charity and private industry which show that the latter is overwhelming more effiicient at what it does than the former.
Topics: Liberals, socialism, liberalism, political philosophy, poverty |
