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]]]]]]]]]] WASHINGTON'S MORAL BULLY EXTORTS [[[[[[[[[[[[[[
IN NAME OF CHARITY (1/05/1989)
By Patrick J. Buchanan
From Gannett Westchester Newspapers, 4 January 1989, p. 16:4
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
WASHINGTON -- It was about 3 a.m. Christmas morning when Mitch
and the elves went to work, ripping down the barriers the Metro
system put up to keep ``street people'' from sleeping in subway
entrances.
These fences, said Mitch, before a battery of microphones as
thick as MacArthur's on the battleship Missouri, represent
``walls ... we have erected between ourselves and the people who
have no place to go.'' As of this writing, no charges have yet
been lodged.
Mitch Snyder, apostle to the homeless, has this city
buffaloed; and the success of a moral bully is always directly
proportional to the moral confusion of the men in authority who
confront him.
Giving credit where it is due, Mitch has done quite a job
here, first, in providing nightly shelter to hundreds; second, in
putting homelessness on the public agenda. More power to him.
But when they let Mitch out of the Big House up at Danbury,
and he came to D.C., he brought something besides social concern;
he brought the moral arrogance of the Berrigan boys he much
admires, a mania for publicity, and a shakedown artist's ability
to extort.
While I served in the Reagan White House, Mitch went on one of
his hunger strikes, demanding $5 million for his huge shelter in
the Capitol's shadow where the TV cameras congregate and the
Hollywood sparklies gather to show off their social consciences.
It was pure extortion. Had Mitch put a gun to our heads, we
would have been called cowards for caving in. But, because Mitch
put the gun to his own head, threatening to starve himself, it
worked. Since our appeasement, Mitch's demands have escalated;
now, he insists the homeless have the right to sleep in the
subways, where they routinely urinate, defecate and insult
commuters.
Is it not a mark of our moral flabbiness that we take it?
Homelessness is a social problem, manageable with existing
resources, not a social crisis; Mitch is exploiting the issue to
make an ideological point against the country that locked him up
and make himself a household word.
Ronald Reagan in his interview with David Brinkley was right.
It was ACLU types who insisted that mental patients be turned
Washington's Moral Bully Extorts In Name of Charity 2
loose to wander the streets.
Though America's housing stock is larger than ever (the U.S.
has a high 8.5 percent vacancy rate), housing remains tightest in
those cities -- L.A., Santa Monica, Washington, New York -- that
impose rent controls. Here, the homeless are most heavily
concentrated. Rent control and homelessness march hand in hand.
To help the homeless, rather than exploit them as exhibit A in
somebody's Case Against America, we ought to take the following
steps:
o Permit the mentally retarded to be taken off the streets,
institutionalized, sheltered and cared for; and enforce vagrancy
laws against addicts and alcoholics. (There is no inherent
conflict between compassion and clean cities.)
o Require repeal of rent controls, as a condition of federal
housing funds.
o Convert federal funds for public housing (a boon to
builders) into vouchers the homeless can use to find private
shelter.
o Prevent federal funds from being used to tear down
single-room occupancy hotels, encourage the building of more
SROs, and oppose zoning laws that rule out SROs and multiple
family dwellings.
o Permit charitable groups to use abandoned buildings as
shelters.
o Treat Mitch like any other troublemaker. When he declares
a hunger strike, emulate the good fathers at Holy Trinity, whom
Mitch threatened with his starvation, if they didn't fork over
the parish building fund. Keeping the money, the priests prayed
and prayed, and, sure enough, eventually, a wiser and thinner
Mitch arose, took up his pallet and headed off to Burger King.
[The following is not part of the article above.]
Close Encounter of a Weird Kind
[By Martin Morse Wooster]
[From Reason, July 1987, p. 27]
Mitch Snyder is the media's favorite homeless person. The
confidant of senators such as Teddy Kennedy and Hollywood stars
such as Whoopi Goldberg and Martin Sheen (who played Snyder in a
1985 TV docudrama), Snyder courts the press assiduously,
attracting guilt like a supercharged magnet. This has led some
skeptics to think him messianic. ``Whatever you do,'' one friend
warned me, ``don't talk to Mitch Snyder about Gandhi.''
Former adman Snyder looks more like an actor playing a
homeless person than an actual bum. He doesn't have dirty hair
or holes in his pants; when I talked to him, he was wearing a
faded army surplus jacket, a bright-red ski cap, and brand-new
hiking boots. Think of Bruce Weitz from ``Hill Street Blues''
with a full beard, and you'll have a close approximation of
Snyder's looks.
Snyder doesn't have a phone, but, like any Washington bigwig,
he has an appointments secretary who keeps his calendar. I
caught up with him on the steps of the Capitol, participating in
a rally against aid to the contras that featured 20 speakers
yelling at six passers-by. We walked to a nearby fountain and
started to talk.
``Mr. Snyder,'' I asked, ``I've heard you call yourself an
anarchist, but everything you advocate calls for increased
government spending. How do you reconcile this with your
anarchism?''
Snyder glared at me through glazed brown eyes. ``Our
community is often called Christian anarchist. To be a Christian
is to be an anarchist. I refer to myself as a Christian person
of faith.''
``But how does your anarchism express itself?''
``We advocate different government spending. We advocate the
disappearance of government. We don't pay taxes, and discourage
others from paying taxes. As long as people give a trillion
dollars to the federal government, they should spend it
responsibly.''
``Why do you feel that the homeless should be given federal
funds?'' I pressed. ``Shouldn't they be taught to fend for
themselves?''
Snyder's voice darkened. ``Homeless people are not
responsible for their state,'' he said. ``Like any oppressed
Washington's Moral Bully Extorts In Name of Charity 4
people, they need to fight.''
I asked Snyder a few more questions. You'll find his answers
scattered through the article [article omitted]. His answers
kept getting shorter and shorter, and I thought it best to end
the interview. I asked if I could tour the shelter that his
group received $6.5 million in federal funds to rebuild.
``You're not from HUD, are you?'' Snyder said. ``I talked to
one guy who defended HUD, and he got a job in [the Department of]
Agriculture.''
``Mr. Snyder,'' I said, ``I swear to you on a stack of Bibles
that I am not going to defend HUD or any government agency in my
article.''
That got me into Snyder's shelter, but I had to promise not to
describe what I saw. It wasn't a pretty sight. As I left,
Snyder said I should feel lucky to be allowed into the shelter.
``We only give tours to people who we think can help up,'' he
said. ``People like ... Alan Cranston.'' [End of item.]
---------------------
More:
Main, Thomas J. ``The Homeless Families of New York''. The
Public Interest, No. 85 (Fall 1986).
Rossi, Peter H. et al. ``The Urban Homeless: Estimating
Composition and Size''. Science 235:1336-1341 (13 March 1987).
Tucker, William. ``Where Do the Homeless Come From?''. National
Review, 25 September 1987, p. 32.
Tucker, William. ``It's a Rotten Life: Rent Control and the Loss
of Civility''. Reason, February 1989, pp. 22-26.
Wooster, Martin Morse. ``The Homeless Issue: An Adman's Dream''.
Reason, July 1987, pp. 20-28.
* * *
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