Meanwhile, John Edwards, the Breck Girl, said yesterday that it’s ‘silly to suggest that his wealth and expensive tastes have hurt his credibility as an advocate for the poor. ‘Would it have been better if I had done well and didn’t care?’ Edwards asked. Edwards noted that some of the most acclaimed anti-poverty advocates came from privileged backgrounds, including Franklin Roosevelt and Bobby Kennedy. ‘You could see and feel the empathy they had,’ said Edwards, speaking from his home in North Carolina during an interview on Iowa Public Radio.’ Okay, so if he said that it will be the end of it. The Drive-Bys say, ‘Yeah he’s addressed the issue and he’s genuine, and he’s authentic.’ The larger question is this. The Breck Girl is just like the latest in an endless parade of liberal Democrats to come along and make poverty the cause célèbre and to claim they’ve got the solution for it. Now, something everybody ought to really think about is, ‘Can poverty be solved by government?’ Can it?
Somebody tell me anywhere in the world where poverty has been solved by government. You can’t. Unless you say government get out of the way. But I’m talking about — (interruption) yes, Mr. Snerdley, what? Norway? Oh, come on, don’t give me Switzerland and Norway. I mean, yeah, they legalize drugs and they pay people for the drugs, they’ve legalized prostitution, yeah, because nobody cares about poverty, they’re stoned. You know, Norway, you telling me there’s no poverty there? The point is, in major industrialized nations with genuine percentages of poor people, has government wiped it out? Has government fixed it? Is the Breck Girl’s campaign anything new? What’s his problem? It’s all class envy. The rich are causing poverty. The rich don’t care. He cares. He’s rich and he cares. But nobody else cares. So he’s going to make them care. He’s going to take their money away. Is that the way to do it? Is that the way to solve poverty? Do we in this country, do we not have practically a 50-year track record we can look at and say affirmatively that government fixed poverty? We cannot say that.
We have the same people percentage-wise as a portion of our population in poverty as when the war on poverty began. Time to pull out of the war on poverty, Great Society, so many redundant programs, is not the answer, is it? Which means liberalism, Democrat answers, are not the answer to the problems of poverty. Of course, the dirty little secret is, even libs know this, the point is not solving it. They want credit for big hearts; they want credit for great intentions; they want to get credit for caring. Whether they accomplish anything or not, you’re supposed to look at their results. Look at their results and that’s mean-spirited and cruel. You’re supposed to examine their intentions. They have good hearts. At least they want to help. People like us, they say, don’t even care, and if it weren’t for them then there would be no hope for poverty. Of course, their solution is always more money, and without teaching people how to escape poverty. I don’t think many libs want them to fully escape it, then they wouldn’t need government. I know it sounds cynical, but 50 years of track record is pretty much evidence to look at to draw some pretty definitive conclusions.