I would like to state that I did not intend to offend Paul as much as he seems
to be offended. For that he has my apology.
Living in northern New England, and growing up here, I've absorbed quite a bit
of the Yankee ethic. Aphorisms tend to be common as 'rules for living' round
these parts. I guess what I was trying to say was "If your not part of the
solution, you are part of the problem" or something like that. Other things,
like "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" spring to mind. A Yankee does care about
his neighbors, especially those in hard times, and will do what he can
personally to help them, but he highly resents other people deciding how his or
her money should be spent to 'solve' other people's problems. A Yankee knows
that its best to teach a starving man to fish, and that good fences make good
neighbors. He is highly suspicious of the big headed nonsense that know-it-all
city slickers think they 'know', but is not reticent to use what can be seen to
really work with one's own eyes. A person who continues to insist the sky is
green in spite of the facts can frequently be expected to meet with scorn,
dismissal, or sometimes pity, but rarely with respect.
Paul's claims of concern for the poor I also share. However, my opinions about
the proper prescription for what ails them are not founded in elitism as he
assumes, but from personal experience as a former member of that class. I was
once homeless, unemployed, and dead broke. There were no government bureaucrats
there to cut me checks to help me along, because I was a single, straight, able
bodied white male. Growing up here in northern New Hampshire, I had seen rural
poverty first hand, ranging from a period as a child when my father was
unemployed from his job as an engineer, my mother supported the family on her
med tech job, and when dad was employed, the glut of engineers on the market
kept salaries down around $3500 a year in the early 70's. Many of the kids I
grew up with were dirt poor, such that a pair of shoes were their christmas
present more often than not, and knowing the parents of these kids formed a
rather distinct impression of the sort of people who live in chronic poverty
generation after generation.
When I got out of the Air Force during the recession of 1991, Boeing had
rescinded a job offer due to a hiring freeze, and I arrived in Seattle with few
prospects and a quickly dwindling savings. Homelessness followed, but 6 months
later I had three jobs, was back in school, and off the streets. A year later I
had launched a business with two other people, and was responsible for
pioneering energy conservation technology. I have never once received a single
cent of government assistance. Indeed, I was defrauded of many thousands of
dollars of benefits that I had specifically paid for and earned from my military
service by that government.
So you see Paul, I don't come to the debate here with any sort of elitist
attitudes. Nor are they fascist as you would like to accuse me of being while
hiding behind some anonymous third parties. Rather, it is the sort of big
government palliatives that you have said are needed to 'keep the market in
check' that are the real fascist policies. Fascism is incompatible with
individualism, despite all that the socialistic types in the intelligentsia
would like to claim. It has been demonstrated here time and again the historical
facts about the communalist/socialist nature of fascism.
One reason that poverty cannot be addressed by government is due to the failing
of the 'one size fits all' nature of government solutions (especially fascist
solutions). As someone once said, "every happy family is happy in exactly the
same way, but those in misery are each miserable in their own unique way." There
are general prescriptions that can help, but they all require the active,
energetic initiative and participation of the beneficiary. Education, for
instance, does not happen by osmosis, as any college professor on this list can
attest, and it is education that can contribute the greatest amount to helping
the poor become individuals of acheivement. The competetive ethic can also
contribute greatly, but this is also something that require the individual
initiative of the beneficiary. It is not an accident that professional sports,
which is the most open to minorities, and which does not conflict with a
traditional lower class distain for book learning, receives such attention from
those minorities, and has contributed much to helping to reinfuse the
competetive spirit into the disaffected.
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