Saturday, August 29, 2009

Homeless & Poor - Pair-a-Poems #homeless #poor #sonnet

A Logical Dialogue with Homeless Al

How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance. Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? By BARBARA EHRENREICH Published: August 8, 2009

Your name, if you please?
Al Szekely. (cough, wheeze).

Why are you in a wheel chair? (Please don't whine!)
Happened in Fu Bai, Vietnam: took a bullet in my spine.

From the homeless shelter you were evicted, because..?
Police in late night raid took men with legal flaws.

What was your warrant for? What was your dirty deed?
Court appearance on “criminal trespassing” charge I didn’t heed.

How did you commit that crime? Where did you trespass?
Homeless, sleeping in a D.C. suburb sidewalk, by the grass.

I’m sure you were disorderly. Were you drunk or on drugs?
No, I do neither, and I’m an ordained minister. ( He shrugs).

So, they arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless?
You got it well. My crime’s being poor. Without faith, I’d be hopeless.

(This imagined dialogue is inspired by a true incident documented in Barbara Ehrenreich’s article)

The Crime of Being Poor
Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

With all the socialist accusations being made,
We do well to face the needy status and plight.
Homelessness: infraction with fine to be paid,
For loitering and begging. (Keep them out of sight.)

Having no habitation to drink in privacy,
A beer in public is a ticket to the clink.
The poor have no chits in meritocracy,
So hide or can them; gentries think they stink.

Debates on health insurance lack the needy’s voice,
(Testimony that would challenge those fighting change.)
For disadvantaged, emergency room is only choice
When health or life’s at stake, they can’t pre-arrange.

To push out or incarcerate the poor does rend
Our social fabric and will bite us in the end.

2 comments:

  1. Hello from Robert Bumbalough aka FX_Infidel on twitter. BTW thanks for the follow.

    The fallacy your making is to assume that goodness is pleasure and evil is pain. This is false. Goodness is a set of actions undertaken by biological organisms that have the faculties of reasoning, rationality, and volitional will. The actions must be directed by the free choice to do those things that rationally entail survival and improvement of life without aggression against others.

    You mentioned "the poor". People who are poor are so either because they want to be that way or because they are incapable of rationally directed action to improve their own lives. Consequently, their plight is not anybodies problem except their own.

    You mentioned "Our social fabric". There is no such thing as society. There is no collective. Homo Sapiens are not social insects or pack animals. We are stand alone individuals who use our ability to reason rationally to function as independent traders to acquire by means of Capitalism that which we value. The associations of some with others is of no concern to the remainder of humans unless there is some trade that will benefit all the participants such that cause for further association presents.

    You mentioned: "We do well to face the need status and plight." This is patently false because neither good nor evil is intrinsic to anything or action in and of itself. Good is as I pointed out above. Evil is the absence of goodness. Those poor who are either lazy, or foolish, or incapable of alleviating their lack of resources are failing to act in accordance with the good. Their actions are then evil. They themselves are not evil as nothing is evil in and of itself including human beings. To correct their maladies perhaps instruction may be in order. If you value such activity, by all means proceed; however, do not play the aggressor against others by proxy via using power of government to compel them against their will to assist those engaged in passive evil.

    You wrote: "With all the socialist accusations being made," This presupposes by faith of a religious sort that people should not be opposed to philosophical doctrines that are harmful to their well being or that being opposed to that which results in not performing the good is somehow wrong. You, conveniently, neglect to mention why this is the case in order to slip your fallacy past the reader.

    You wrote: (Testimony that would challenge those fighting change.) The needs of others are none of your or my business unless they wish to fulfill those needs via means of trading for something either you or I have to offer. That a fellow human suffers is not anybodies problem save their own. That's why they can purchase health insurance in what would be a market if it were to be Laissez-faire. You are not your brother's keeper. You are responsible for you and no one else. If you value the others, then you are free to assist them. Do not aggress against still yet others by proxy through government. Recall that the only proper function of government is to defend the citizens from military aggression, to suppress brigandage and banditry, and to provide a forum wherein citizens may arbitrate their differences.

    Regarding health care rights see "The Real Right to Medical Care Versus Socialized Medicine" by By George Reisman at http://www.capitalism.net/articles/SOC_MED_files/The%20Real%20Right%20to%20Medical%20Care%20Versus%20Socialized%20Medicine.html

    Best Regards

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  2. I liked the poem but the comment before was a little long and left me speechless. Please keep me updated and keep up that creativity.

    ReplyDelete