Webistemology

An opinion piece on TheStar.com includes the following, “Canada strips welfare recipients of so much – their pride, their privacy, their savings, their ability to provide basic necessities for their children – that many will never escape poverty.” By stripping privacy and dignity away with food and shelter, we are effectively removing fundamental civil liberties. While the immediate privacy impact is on the homeless and the poor, this degrades all of our liberties.

I haven’t read the report underlying this comment but I suspect that the article may actually be softening the message. Canada is introducing it’s own ‘untouchable’ and invisible caste. Do you make eye contact with the homeless and the panhandlers on Canada’s streets?

PS. Why is that we think that Third World countries have beggars, but we have homeless people and panhandlers. Just how big is our level of self delusion and unjustified self satisfaction at the prosperity of Canadian society?

PPS. Check out the comments following the article, and see the outrage directed against the welfare recipients.