You might have heard the heart-warming story about the New York City policeman who bought a pair of boots for a homeless man who had been wandering the frigid streets on bare feet. A tourist happened to witness the act of kindness, the inevitable video wound up going “viral” on the internet, and countless human interest stories followed.
The denouement of this tale has not been as widely reported, but then again, it’s not nearly so heart-warming. Apparently the homeless man is still wandering the frigid streets on bare feet, preferring to keep the new boots hidden in some secret location, and has lately been babbling to reporters about the unnamed people who want to kill him for his famous footwear. We’d love to tell a happier ending to the story, especially during the holiday season, but we are stuck with the facts.
This unpleasant plot twist is not, alas, at all surprising. Although the popular press typically portrays the homeless as innocent victims of impersonal economic forces, at least when there’s a Republican in the White House, our experience suggests that most of them are on the streets because they suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction, or a mental illness such as seems to afflict the barefoot vagrant. Which is not to say that the homeless are any less worthy of the public’s concern, even when there’s a Democrat in the White House, only that solutions other than hand-outs are required.
The officer in the story deserves all the praise he’s received for his generosity, as his act was clearly well intended, but we hope he now realizes that the $100 he reportedly spent on the boots would have been better spent elsewhere. Although it’s not clear what he could have done to provide more meaningful help for the homeless man, a question that has vexed more sophisticated policy-makers throughout the millennia in which there have been homeless people, it seems likely that officer would have done better by arresting the homeless man on a vagrancy charge and thereby at least providing him with a few days and nights of nourishment and warm shelter.
Good intentions wreak untold damage on society. A high-minded desire to provide homes for those with low credit scores created the subprime mortgage fiasco, the Great Society programs that waged war on poverty wrecked families and created long-term welfare dependence, and Rachel Carson’s altruistic environmentalism caused millions of malaria deaths. The kindly cop’s act of generosity did no harm, except for the loss of $100 to some charity that might have actually done some good with it, but it still provides an example of the road that is paved with good intentions.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 