Editorial - 07 Apr 2010
Something Very Wrong with Baltimore's Children
T
he Baltimore Sun article “Group of children sought in abuse of 1-year-old dog” is yet more evidence that there is something very wrong with the children in Baltimore. And before the hackles are raised, I will concede that there are thankfully many good children living in the city. But there are many bad children also, very bad, and they appear to be a significant minority.
The city, state and federal government had better give serious consideration to what is wrong, and how it’s going to be fixed.
They should start with the welfare system. The social welfare system was never intended for able-bodied adults to spend their lives ducking work and avoiding responsibility. It wasn’t meant to be abused as anything more than a short-term solution providing temporary assistance. And it certainly wasn’t intended to become the cross-generational lifestyle choice that it’s become in too many areas of Maryland, and a good portion of Baltimore City. Public housing was meant to be temporary, not permanent, and we’d all be better off if that were the case. Generous, long-term assistance should be available for the disabled and the elderly, not for the lazy.
Financially rewarding women for having babies they are light-years away from being able to take care of has proven to be a social policy disaster. There’s far too many unsupervised kids walking the streets, displaying the nonchalant, entitled attitude indicative of people who have had everything given to them for far too long. Removing fathers from the home, another unfortunate fall-out of our social welfare legislation, has also been an utter disaster.
While it’s too soon to say that all of the children involved in the reprehensible attack on a one year old puppy live in 3rd generation welfare homes, or that there is no father present, or that they are typical of the entitled little welfare monsters we have created, empirically it’s what most of us will assume, and it’s very likely that we’ll be correct.
At some point, this has got to end. Those who continue to promote the failed policies that have plagued us for fifty years must realize that it’s time to give it up. They didn’t work. Children like this should not exist, and the rest of us shouldn’t be subjected to them. It’s not fair to their peers, their teachers, their innocent crime victims or the non-human animals that reside in the city. The society that has created them had better figure out what works and what doesn’t and make some changes, quickly.
Editor - bethesite.com
