]]]]]]]]]] 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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