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December 7 - December 13, 2021
The problem with Housing First stems from the fact that it doesn’t require that people address their mental illness and substance abuse, which are often the underlying causes of homelessness.
In the mind of many progressives, the homeless person is the Victim, the police is the Persecutor, and the social workers and activists are the Rescuers. But sometimes the Victim plays the Persecutor, the Persecutor the Victim, and finally the Victim the Rescuer.
Progressives don’t trade away Fairness for victims, only for those they see as privileged. Progressives still value Fairness, but more for victims, and their progressive allies, than for everyone equally, and particularly not for people progressives view as the oppressors and victimizers. Conservatives and moderates tend to define Fairness around equal treatment, including enforcement of the law.
Victimology asserts that victims are inherently good because they have been victimized. It robs victims of their moral agency and creates double standards that frustrate any attempt to criticize their behavior, even if they’re behaving in self-destructive, antisocial ways like smoking fentanyl and living in a tent on the sidewalk. Such reasoning is obviously faulty. It purifies victims of all badness. But by appealing to emotion, victimology overrides reason and logic.
The progressive obsession with changing the names of schools and tearing down statues of people allegedly guilty of genocide in the past comes at a time when our greatest global rival is actually guilty of committing one in the present.