When the victim is to blame, blame him. If I get drunk and suffer a hangover, is it your fault? Jim Beam’s fault? Why?
Some will object that the (slight) poverty of the American poor somehow forces them to make bad decisions, which they know to be bad decisions. Well, if the poor have no free will, and haplessly do what their environment ordains, can not the management of McDonald's plead the same?
If the poor of America were truly penurious, and forcibly kept so, I would see things differently. The sweated children of New York, the slaves of the South, the virtual slaves of the Industrial Revolution in England-these had a cause for complaint. They suffered greatly, and had no way out.
Neither did they have the subsidized housing of today, the welfare, and the leisure consequent to these, nor free medical care, nor public schools which by law they had to attend, nor free libraries, nor the array of special and unearned privilege called "affirmative action." Today's poor do have them. They also live in a society that has begged them, prodded them, enticed them to do something with and for themselves. They haven't. They aren't interested. And neither, any longer, am I.
There are more attractive options, in this country, for bored, idle minds (and hands).
Wait, this link ought to work. It does, but it eliminates the sidebar, with all the navigation stuff.
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