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Over the past 40 years, we've had a series of presidents and state/local leaders who are allergic to spending the money necessary to solve social problems. You

Over the past 40 years, we've had a series of presidents and state/local leaders who are allergic to spending the money necessary to solve social problems. You aren't going to solve mental health and drug addiction without spending money on treatment. You aren't going to solve crime without both spending money to arrest, prosecute and imprison the criminals in prisons that actually rehabilitate criminals AND spending money to address the root causes of crime such as poverty and poor education. None of this is particularly appealing to politicians when there are corporations that you can give taxpayer-funded handouts to in exchange for campaign donations and help building your personal fortune. If the problems aren't solved, you can just blame everything on the other political party (even if they haven't won an election in your area since before WW2) or the politicians who came before you.

lurking15 3y ago
> spending the money necessary to solve social problems There's a certain idealism descended mainly from Rousseau that humans are inherently good and if they commit crimes or act in dysfunctional or evil ways, it's because society has corrupted them. It follows that money and govt programs can correct all these problems (in reality, some vague maternal care instinct that often manifests as letting vagrants run roughshod over public spaces, if your community Walgreens is bare and you can't buy basic toiletries cause the DA stopped prosecuting theft you have no right to complain because this is simply late-stage capitalism, don't ya know). Meanwhile innocent people are routinely violently attacked by truly evil criminals who should be locked away in jails or worse. CS Lewis also treats this subject as a matter of medicalizing morality in "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" [1], where he argues that far from being sophisticated and humane, humanitarian notions of "sinfulness" (crime, drug abuse, the now commonplace social-justice attitude toward "thought crimes", etc.) ends up being dehumanizing and deeply disturbing: > Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. [1]: https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ResJud/1954/30.pdf https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ResJud/1954/30.pd...
- cratermoon 3y ago
  Even if you're a hardcore Calvinist who believes in total depravity, you can still have compassion for the individual. To be specific: while the inability to outwardly uphold the law is inherent, the gospel provides for love and compassion towards the fallen. Also, those notions of "sinfulness" are human constructs. Drug abuse, for example, as a moral failing, is a judgement. But drug addiction is not a moral failing, it is a disease that can be treated. There are many things we now know are treatable diseases that in the past were considered signs of moral failure: leprosy being an obvious one.
SoftTalker 3y ago
> If the problems aren't solved, you can just blame everything on the other political party Exactly. This is why problems like crime and drugs never get solved. They are too valuable as election issues. Or maybe they are fundamentally unsolvable, but a lot of places seem to do better than the USA on these. We used to have wars to keep the population of young uneducated males in check and out of mischief, but now that the military is all-volunteer that doesn't work as well as it used to.

lurking15 3y ago

> spending the money necessary to solve social problems There's a certain idealism descended mainly from Rousseau that humans are inherently good and if they commit crimes or act in dysfunctional or evil ways, it's because society has corrupted them. It follows that money and govt programs can correct all these problems (in reality, some vague maternal care instinct that often manifests as letting vagrants run roughshod over public spaces, if your community Walgreens is bare and you can't buy basic toiletries cause the DA stopped prosecuting theft you have no right to complain because this is simply late-stage capitalism, don't ya know). Meanwhile innocent people are routinely violently attacked by truly evil criminals who should be locked away in jails or worse. CS Lewis also treats this subject as a matter of medicalizing morality in "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" [1], where he argues that far from being sophisticated and humane, humanitarian notions of "sinfulness" (crime, drug abuse, the now commonplace social-justice attitude toward "thought crimes", etc.) ends up being dehumanizing and deeply disturbing: > Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. [1]: https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ResJud/1954/30.pdf https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ResJud/1954/30.pd...

cratermoon 3y ago
Even if you're a hardcore Calvinist who believes in total depravity, you can still have compassion for the individual. To be specific: while the inability to outwardly uphold the law is inherent, the gospel provides for love and compassion towards the fallen. Also, those notions of "sinfulness" are human constructs. Drug abuse, for example, as a moral failing, is a judgement. But drug addiction is not a moral failing, it is a disease that can be treated. There are many things we now know are treatable diseases that in the past were considered signs of moral failure: leprosy being an obvious one.

SoftTalker 3y ago

> If the problems aren't solved, you can just blame everything on the other political party Exactly. This is why problems like crime and drugs never get solved. They are too valuable as election issues. Or maybe they are fundamentally unsolvable, but a lot of places seem to do better than the USA on these. We used to have wars to keep the population of young uneducated males in check and out of mischief, but now that the military is all-volunteer that doesn't work as well as it used to.