I read about the increasing numbers of homeless in New York
City. Is there a more horrible place to be homeless then in the vicinity
of the Statue of Liberty ? No, don't give me your homeless and destitute !
What does the Red Cross have to offer these unfortunate people ?
I am familiar with quite a few homeless types right here in Providence
where I work. To be sure, they are not right out of a Dickens' novel - poor
but lovable. A lot of them are clearly mentally ill. The mentally ill
should not be free to choose homelessness. What they need is not a pernicious
FREEDOM but a benevolent and protective authoritarianism. So we must build
more mental institutions or convert unused government properties for
housing the mentally ill.
More " normal " types are homeless for no other reason than that
they have been abandoned by family and extended family : too inconvenient for
comfortable people to put up a poor relative even for a few weeks !
The able bodied but chronically homeless might be drafted
by the military - which might succeed in making clean, self-disciplined,
and self-respecting individuals out of them - making them useful citizens.
And are we not doing America the Beautiful a favor by
removing these human scarecrows from our sight - not by neglecting them
but by caring for them ?
Perhaps the homeless do serve a purpose after all in our
capitalist economy: these human scarecrows remind us of the horrible
consequences of giving up the daily grind !
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Ron