"The Depravity Of The Poor"

[filkertom]

Holy fucking fuck:

It is simply a fact that our social problems are increasingly connected to the depravity of the poor. If an American works hard, completes their education, gets married, and stays married, then they will rarely — very rarely — be poor. At the same time, poverty is the handmaiden of illegitimacy, divorce, ignorance, and addiction. As we have poured money into welfare, we’ve done nothing to address the behaviors that lead to poverty while doing all we can to make that poverty more comfortable and sustainable.

Earlier this week, Walter Russell Mead highlighted disturbing research showing that the poor — far more than the rich — are disconnected from church and religion. While church attendance is dropping among all social classes, it’s falling off a cliff for the poorest and least-educated Americans. In other words, the deeper a person slides into poverty, the more they’re disconnected from the very values that can save them and their families.

The bottom line is that we need more free enterprise, and we need more virtue. Sadly, the Great Society and the sexual revolution have deprived us of both.

Whole lotta WUT I DON'T EVEN goin' on.

Comments

[salexa]

So because I choose to remain unmarried I must be depraved? (I can be, but that is not the reason).

This is so wrong on so many levels my brain hurts to even think about it.

[thornsilver]

Yeah, comments fail on that one.

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

I have three words for these people:

The French Revolution

[zellion.livejournal.com]

a few of the comments on the linked post there are great already. The "we stop wanting to pray to an asshole who ignores our increasingly desperate prayers" and the quote about Sodom were my favorites.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

OK, I followed the link, and it comes up scrambled on my browser. Who exactly are you quoting here?

[lariss.livejournal.com]

This is so twisted it no longer even resembles logic. It's like...logic origami. Look! It was logic, but NOW it's a CRANE!!!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, so THAT must have been the problem. I mean, I was poor, educated, and working my ass off at 3 jobs at once, but I was supposed to get married. That would have sorted the whole 'no food thing' out, I guess.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't disagree with the "works hard" part... Nobody ever told me things were always going to be easy, and I've done okay at least in part because I don't expect it to be.

Success is largely a matter of luck, timing and maintaining realistic expectations, which is really difficult in an idealistic, "should-be" culture like ours. And it doesn't always work, even if you do everything right.

(Sadly, I learned that last bit from personal experience.)

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

It's a magic trick! With enough knots and twist and turns, anything can become a steaming pile of horseshit!

[kengr]

It is simply a fact that our social problems are increasingly connected to the depravity of the poor. If an American works hard, completes their education, gets married, and stays married, then they will rarely — very rarely — be poor.

Utter bullshit. Working hard hasn't had a connection to keeping a job for a *long* time. Hell, with 10% unemployment, having a job (unless you have a *very* in demand skill set) is purely a matter of *luck*.

Same goes for education.

The main reason for the number of single *women* who are on welfare is because many states didn't *allow* a family with an able-bodied man to go on welfare (at least that's the way it used to be). So to save the family, the husband would have to leave.

It's projection, pure and simple.

They *need* being poor to be the *fault* of the poor. Something due to some shortcoming of their. Not merely misfortune that could happen to anyone.

That way they can stifle any inclination to empathy. And try to tell themselves that "as you do it unto the least of these" doesn't apply.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The link goes to Balloon Juice, which links Poison Your Mind, which links to the original article by David French in National Review.

[codevixen.livejournal.com]

Well, sure it would, assuming the guy you got married to was a nice man who could take care of all your problems and give you lots of babies!

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

*twitch* Even knowing it's tongue in cheek, the thought of babies makes my skin itch. ;)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

See, if you'd been married, like I was, your husband could work 2 jobs as well and bring home expired fried chicken from the gas station. Solves the No Food problem.

Of course, transportation gets tricky with only one vehicle, and the neighborhood has two crack shootings in 9 months. But you have someone to cuddle with on the floor.

Yeah, been there. Married, college educated, working hard, $5week for food for 4 people.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

The transportation would have been okay as long as one of us could ride on the handlebars....

Sorry to hear you've been there too. It's so frustrating, and the whole system is so damn broken.

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

Another round of magical thinking, I see. If you do everything right, you will be successful; therefore, if you aren't successful, you must not have done everything right.

Grrrr.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

This. Somewhere in my huge number of quotes posts, I have a quote from someone that runs like "Never treat anything as a fait accompli that depends on another person." Your getting a job (or keeping a job), no matter how hard wingnuts, society, and your parents want to pretend, ultimately is up to other people; if the hiring manager for the position for which you just did a kick-ass, swing-for-the-fences interview decides sie doesn't like your face, you're still not getting hired that day, no matter how hard you worked.

Also, are these dipshits actually aware of how much it costs to get married, even if you assume a bare-bones non-ceremony ceremony with a JP at the local courthouse? (Which, yes, skips the religion part that French seems so insistent upon, but it also skips the expense of renting the church along with the officiant.) Grrr...

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason that people have fallen away from the church is that the church hasn't done its job well. When you have scandals like the Catholic Church pedophile thing, national pastors falling from grace and other such problems then it stands to reason that people are going to lose faith in the church. I'll give credit where credit is due to the men and women who go out into the world to preach the gospel and help the poor in other nations (things like building homes, digging wells, helping feed the poor, etc); but there needs to be an adressing of the very real public transgressions that have occured.

I can't help but think of the recent study that came out of Florida that studied drug use amongst Floridians. It turns out that 2% of those on public assistance did drugs and 8% of total Floridians used drugs. I wonder how the writer of the above article would spin that little bit of news.

It is not a lack of Free Enterprise that is the problem. It is that the Republicans have created an atmosphere where tax breaks are going to coporations who send jobs overseas. That needs to be reversed to where corporations are given tax incentives to, not only keep jobs here, but to make sure that there are new jobs created here as well.

It is also interesting to note that the writer never mentions that there is a particular part in the Bible where a rich man comes to Jesus and asks him what more he needed to do to get into heaven. Jesus told him to go and sell all he owned and give it to the poor. The rich man left depressed and Jesus commented that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

What about that?

[juglore.livejournal.com]

Someone might point out that welfare ended in 1996. Aint been nobody on welfare since then. And TANF aint the same thing at all.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

I'm just simply boggled. Here I am with a college degree, recently divorced and Pagan and have never taken a dime of government money.

A marriage is only as good and honorable and long-lasting as BOTH parties are committed. I was, he wasn't. But I'm paying the price for his lack of honor. And....oh, never mind. I'm preaching to the choir here anyway.

So it's my fault that I'm poor, right? I just can't begin to comment on this without getting into expletives.

[zellion.livejournal.com]

What gets me is we'd be ok if we hadn't bought into the whole "another degree for my husband will make things better!" line and gotten stuck with student loans that are bleeding us dry.

[zellion.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's pretty much it. Simply do not know enough vulgar language to accurately express my opinion.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

They don't like that part; I think they have a version where Jesus says if the rich man doesn't want to give up all he has, he can go kick some gay people instead.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

And just screaming wordlessly tends to bother the neighbours.

[atalantapendrag.livejournal.com]

...wow.

Yeah, anyone know where I can get a Phrygian cap and a tricolor badge? It's getting closer and closer to time for heads in the gutter instead of disabled veterans.