Paying Attention

The morality of a nation is best judged by how its poor are treated.

A generation ago, there were enough non-poor people interested in being a moral nation that poverty was on the radar screen.  Dr. King’s great cause was his Poor Peoples Campaign.  The Welfare Rights Organization and others were organizing low income communities against the REAL CAUSES of poverty and decay: federal highways,  urban renewal, bank and insurance redlining, absentee slumlords, etc.  (Drugs and unwed mothers are symptoms, not sources of decline.)  In rural America they were organizing against energy company land ownership and tax avoidance.

What a change in 40 years.  Ronald Reagan demonized “welfare queens.”  Bill Clinton “reformed” welfare to guarantee the suffering and neglect of poor people the next time the economy tanked, and that’s exactly what has happened.  Now we rightfully worry about “the disappearing middle class” — and  poor people aren’t even in the discussion.

Except when they are useful.  Like today, when House Republicans banned welfare ATM card use at liquor stores and strip clubs — where one-half of one percent of such cards are actually used.  But it’s useful to reinforce the ancient canard of Social Darwinism, that people are poor because they are immoral.

Today Mitt Romney mentioned poor people, too: “I’m not worried about the very poor,” said the “entitlement society” critic who himself inherited a fortune, “we have a safety net out there.”  Poor people… they’re taken care of.  Not to worry, 

Republicans and the media are slapping their foreheads at this “gaffe,” but it’s not a gaffe.  It’s another symptom of a still rich nation calling itself religious when in fact it has lost its way.