February 17, 2015
Mary Sanchez
Kansas City Star

RE: “The poor you will have with you always”, even if you are married. Some comments on your column about both topics in today’s unlinkable Sun Sentinel

Ms Sanchez,

It’s been some time since we corresponded. I see from the last paragraph of your column that nothing has changed. In its entirety…

“Here’s a tip to politicians who pontificate about the poor:
Approach their condition with empathy and humility, and
You might just figure out ways to actually be helpful.”
The Sun Sentinel
Today
You

Bed side manner is not about how you approach the patient’s condition. It is about how you approach the patient.

I am fighting the urge, not very successfully, to say that the patient/condition dichotomy is a trait most often found in card carrying, fire breathing modern American Liberals. Put differently, they love mankind but it’s the individuals that they have a problem with. Plus, it is a cardinal rule that facts can never interfere either with an academic argument or the implementation of a public policy, however absurd it is in its construct, however absurd its implementation, and however absurd is its predictable unintended consequences.

The Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Housing Authority have been with us for 146 years.

Johnny still can’t read, Solyndra still sucks, and tenants in public housing share one common trait, it being that they will do anything to get out.

You pick the starting date.

Shovel ready jobs, the Great Society, the new Frontier, the New Deal, the Sermon on the Mount, you pick one or some or all.

Which ways have been “helpful”? Which ways haven’t been “helpful”? If the “helpful” ones have been “helpful” why is the problem still with us?

If we seek to improve the human condition by improving the conditions of humans would that not demand that we address the human spirit?

Have we not outlawed that by our love of secular solutions, all of which are politically correct, even the ones that don’t work?

I don’t know what the answer is. I know, by evidence of my own eyes and the overpowering verdict of History, what the answer isn’t.






Kevin Smith
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET