Love Your Homeless Neighbor
On one of the many occasions that the Pharisees sought to test Jesus, one asked Him: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" To this Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."The Second Greatest Commandment could have prevented a tragedy that began early Wednesday in Stockbridge, Georgia. Quinton Wilson, a Waffle House employee, thought it would be amusing to taunt a homeless man named Rex Leo, who often frequented the restaurant. Quinton dared Rex, who may have been drunk at the time, to drink a concoction that included industrial-strength dishwashing liquid.
At first Rex resisted, but then Quinton offered him $5 for the act. Rex never finished the drink. The mixture, according to Rex’s sister “ate through his esophagus . . . it ate his gums, his tongue. He’s on a ventilator right now.”
This morning, Rex is fighting for his life, his digestive system burned. He has contracted a staph infection and double pneumonia. For his part, Quinton is facing an aggravated battery felony charge, upgradable to a homicide count should the victim die. After being released on bail following his arrest, Quinton missed his Friday court appearance and remains at large.
Two liberal members of Congress have introduced the Bringing America Home Act (H.R. 2897), legislation which speaks in terms of a “right” to universal housing, a living wage, and health care. But the welfare state and the demand for “rights” to property— the taxpayers' property –contribute to the homeless problem.
Why do most people walk by the homeless without offering a hand? Part of the dysfunctionalism stems from the fact that long ago Americans through their elected representatives appointed government bureaucrats to take the lead in resolving the problems of homelessness and poverty. Aside from the government and relatively few private individuals, most citizens have abandoned the duty to be neighbors in the Biblical sense. Meanwhile, incidents of cruelty or mocking of the homeless increase as people begin to see the homeless as being less than human.
A case on point is the Bumfights underground video series. In 2003, some intuitive young filmmakers decided to launch an edgy project filming homeless men fighting and performing degrading acts in exchange for "prizes" such as a single donut or money for alcohol. Two of the film's producers pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to stage an illegal fight and were sentenced in June 2003 to perform 280 hours of community service work.
Last February, when the Bumfights creators appeared before the presiding judge and lied about having completed the service, the judge sentenced them to 180 days in jail. Despite the criminal liability and a civil lawsuit filed by the victims, the video-- now in its third installment -- is still being sold on the internet to the tune of 300,000 copies.
The Bumfights video has inspired many acts of hate-filled violence against homeless people, such as the incident this past August where two young men in Los Angeles were indicted on charges of attempted murder following their brutal attacks on two homeless men. The assailants told officers that they had recently watched the Bumfights video before launching the attacks.
D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown was on to something when she famously declared, somewhat hyperbolically, in a 2000 speech:
Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.Government should not be the first resort for remedying social ills. The conundrum is how to convince the majority of citizens to abandon reliance on government to fix every problem and then motivate the more comfortable among us to devote considerable personal time and resources to carrying out the Love Your Neighbor As Yourself command.
posted by The Libertarian Republican at 11:25 PM
3 Comments:
Hi Naomi--
It's difficult to know exactly why the government first began to move in and the community retreat began because the process began so long ago. I do think that people will have a disincentive to aid their neighbors in a big way so long as government is considered to be the primary caregiver. People feel as though they have already "paid into the system" and that it is now the government's responsibility to aid the poor and homeless.
Some black Republicans even argue that liberal Democrats have a vested interest in keeping blacks poor, downtrodden, and clinging to Big Government. That's the argument advanced by Frances Rice, the Chairman of the National Black Republican Association.
"Big government" is not the cause of homelessness, if
it were then you would see more homelessness in the
rest of the industrialized world since the US has the
weakest social saftey net. Instead, you see just the
opposite.
The homeless are homeless most likely because they
suffer from mental illness making it impossible for
them to take care of themselves. The US did not have a
homeless problem before liberals and conservatives
conspired in the 1970s to move more psychiatric
patients to outpatient care rather than inpatient care
(i.e. institutions). Liberals were enamored by the
idea that the mentally ill should be granted full
"civil rights" (encouraged by such cultural artifacts
as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). Conservatives
wanted to cut state and municipal budgets. In the end
America got its homeless problem because the
ideological delusions of both right and left.
"Private charities" would do nothing to solve the
problem because the mentally unstable are the last
ones to recognize their problem and commit themselves.
The homeless problem can only be solved by forcibly
removing the homeless from public property and
institutionalizing them the way we did before.
Psychiatric care has changed tremendously in the last
50 years, treatment is far more humane and barbarous
practices such as lobotomis are no longer performed.
There is no reason to continue the insanity of letting
crazy people expropriate our public property.
Jason,
Although your statement that most of the homeless are homeless because they are mentally ill is probably true, I think you missed the point. Government simply can't deal with the mentally ill/homeless problem in the same way that private individuals can. Contrary to your statement, I believe that many governments are attempting to deal with the problem. In fact, New York (I think it was the city government) recently built large housing comlpexes for the mentally ill. The project was extraordinarily expensive, yet it couldn't cover more than a small portion of the mentally ill in the city.
I think the misconception that the government is successfully taking care of these problems is probably what causes private individuals to avoid helping. If more people realized the extent of the problems stemming from the mentally ill homeless, then we would probably have more private contributions. Most people currently think that the bum on the corner is there because the government won't help him, rather than because it is attempting to help him in an inefficient manner.
Moreover, private individuals could also probably care for the homeless more efficiently. Big government is disorganized and probably can't run a program for the homeless with the same efficiency that private individuals can. Additionally, when people see the problems themselves, they determine where the funds, which would otherwise constitute tax dollars, go. I think that's much more efficient than having Congress decide where to allocate funds.
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