Crime, Violence, and Poverty

The correlation between crime and poverty is undeniable. However, the socialist slant to the correlation is to pretend that poverty is the source of both crime and violence. This thinking has proven to be a cancer to our modern society, resulting in overwhelming American national debt, and the destruction of human character regarding personal responsibility.

This thinking has permeated western society since the time of the Great Depression of the 1930's. By using the failed economy as an excuse for government control, the Democrats provided the forerunner of our current "economic stimulus" legislation and budgeting, and set up the structure of today's nanny state. As with the "New Deal" of 80 years ago, today's stimulus packages are doomed to failure, by making the mistake of funding government nanny programs and preventing real economic growth through the private sector. Regulations are favored over incentives, and the redistribution of wealth through high taxation ensures that failed welfare programs are continued in perpetuity.

By the 1960's, the "New Deal" of Roosevelt, designed to stabilize the economy, developed into the "Great Society" of Johnson, aimed at the removal of poverty. The unmet goals of the 1930's developed into a Utopian dream in the 1960's. The idea that taxpayer dollars could remove both poverty and crime has proven, half a century later, to be a whimsical dream which deteriorated into madness.

The brilliant Texas bastard who started the alleged "Great Society" also revised military strategy. Social idealism combined with Lyndon Johnson's criminal interest in the Asian drug market to shape strategy in the Viet Nam War; it is no coincidence in timing between the drug culture of the 1960's and the Viet Nam War. Johnson's failed efforts in Viet Nam gave birth to the "counterinsurgency" strategy currently being applied in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The school systems were seen as tools in this "war on poverty" and racial integration was used as an excuse for change. By bringing students from high-crime and high-poverty neighborhoods into the same schools as the achieving, it was assumed that opportunities would improve for the poor and that both crime and poverty would be eliminated. Instead, the exact opposite happened. The introduction of criminal thinking into previously law-abiding families caused a catastrophic increase in crime. The introduction of criminal elements into the classrooms caused educational standards to spiral downwards, and schools failed to provide for the needs of productive students, regardless of racial background.

Combined with this, federal welfare payments reduced incentives for self-sufficiency among the poor, creating a dependency as sinister as any found under slavery in the 1800's.

Social conservatism combined with leftist liberalism in promoting the lie that poverty could be combated more with money than police action. Social conservatives successfully diverted police efforts into the "war on drugs," pathetic efforts at alleged "child protection," and a vast array of prohibitions infringing on the constitutional rights of citizens.

If something is stolen from one's home today, one should not expect to get it back, nor expect any serious investigation to result. Any theft today is ignored. After all, through theft, wealth is assumed to be redistributed, since poverty is considered the source of crime. Usually insurance companies pick up the tab for now.

With the attacks of 2001, excuses were made for the corrupt programs of the Bush years. The passing of the Patriot Act and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security resulted in the violation of citizen rights at the cost of citizen tax dollars. The start of Faith-Based Initiative programs ensure eventual government control of the churches. The current Obama regime has used these tools effectively in crushing the rights of citizens, but these were all established under Republican rule. The law-abiding citizens remain under tight government control, their rights violated, while the criminals and terrorists have "human rights" and are the only ones with any protection under the law.

The madness of our domestic policy has been exported to Iraq and Afghanistan, as testified to in the controversial Rolling Stone article on General McChrystal. The madness of "counterinsurgency" strategy implies that the Taliban can be combated more by relieving poverty and providing a stable society of locals than by blasting the jihadi bastards out of existence. Let's send American tax dollars to the poor instead of bombs at the terrorists! Have we lost our minds? This failed policy of building the "Great Society" at home cannot work elsewhere, least of all in Muslim-majority nations, where our dollars end up being collected by terrorists.

In the efforts to stabilize Iraq after the invasion, the city of Fallujah should have been flattened. A significant number of terrorists would have been wiped out. Many civilian lives would have been lost, but many others saved in the long run. Had it been made clear to other terrorist cities and towns that they would meet a similar fate, the uprising would have stopped. A stable government would then have been possible. Instead, vain efforts to build a stable society amidst political instability will continue, and the fighting will continue long after U.S. troops leave either Iraq or Afghanistan. The welfare mentality re-wrote the U.S. rules of combat into a new strategy, called LOSING.

The confusion of cause and effect in the case of poverty and criminal behavior needs to be set straight. Crime breeds poverty. Violence breeds poverty. Forget about fighting poverty, and gain control over the criminals. Poverty will then be reduced, both in America and around the world.