What to do with the refugees

At the Houston Astrodome and other places full of underclass refugees from the Superdome, it's crucial to give them paying work to do as soon as they are physically able. Pay them to pick up litter around the Astrodome and then later all around town. Pay them to set up tents, to dig ditches, anything.

But don't let them sit around.

This may require drafting the lazy into working. It's the oldest cliché in the book that "Idle hands are the devil's workshop," but we are back to a situation where the old clichés are the best advice.*

These refugees are our fellow citizens and they need to be given an opportunity to earn their dignity back by the sweat of their brow.

Similarly, in 2003 we should have given the defeated Iraqi Army paying work immediately, but instead we sent them home on no pay, where they sat around dreaming up ways to kill us.

* Rudyard Kipling said it best in "The Gods of the Copybook Headings." ("Copybook" is British for "notebook." "Headings" refers to traditional proverbs or other ancient truths that teachers long ago assigned their students to write essays about. The moral is that unfashionable truths can’t be ignored forever.)

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer