("Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on 'Lost Decade' ")
There is something deeply immoral in the numbers. It is more than a statement of a nation in economic peril. It is an abdication of our responsibility to protect those who are in jeopardy.
We have long since seemed to grow immune to figures on the page. How can we leave 50 million people without health coverage? How can so many children go to bed each night undernourished emotionally as well as physically? How do we ignore the impact on the black community when the incessant pounding of poverty marches unimpeded in their midst?
Have we no shame? How can we argue over whether to extend unemployment insurance? How can we speak of cutting benefits that supply food and shelter to those in such dire distress? How can we not create a jobs program to give as many among us as we can a little dignity and a reason to look to tomorrow with something other than terror and despair?
In the numbers we see more than poverty. We see our own failings.
2 comments:
How can one party and its acolytes have ZERO social conscious?
Very well said once again, Robbie!
I think nothing points to our moral failing as Americans more than the "poverty" numbers, especially in regard to the impact on children, both directly and indirectly! If we fail as a nation to have the American Dream mean something ... anything... then we will condemn this nation to the slow, agonizing death that two class societies suffer. Think Third World!!
We are perilously close to doing just that and that fact is so deeply, morally offensive to me as an American, as to make the trumped up "culture wars of the political Right, insignificant. The Right may go on about their Moral Majority and Family Values, but let me tell you, the true MORAL majority is with me and you!
Diane
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