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By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
June 21, 2006 Whenever anyone who has been harmed is criticized, the cry arises, "You can't blame the victim!" To which I reply, "OH YES I CAN!" An accounting of funds spent on Hurricane Katrina relief has found over 1 billion dollars doled out on fraudulent claims. Sure, some waste and fraud occurs in such disasters. I know people in my area, where Hurricane Isabelle caused much damage, who applied for several hundred dollars each to replace various items "lost due to the hurricane." I know several who have admitted that they didn't lose the frozen food in their refrigerator, but applied anyway because "the money is there to be claimed." They considered it free money. But the level of fraud on the Gulf Coast appears to be of a magnitude not seen before. And the LA times, bastion of liberalness, has said that worrying about "the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim." AHA! One can't "blame the victim," according to one of the new liberal chants. But yes, I can blame the victims. That a hurricane has flooded your house does not give you the right to defraud the American taxpayer, to submit false claims, to steal money from your fellow citizens. Being a victim of a hurricane does not make you immune to charges of fraud and does not make you automatically virtuous in all your acts. I noted the same mantra chanted by some when I have pointed out that young women risk being raped and murdered if they frequent bars, get drunk, and leave with strangers or simply leave alone and walk a dark street. I submit that being raped and murdered does not prevent my criticism of behaviors that may have made that rape and murder more likely. If liberals were consistent, it would be a more tolerable chant, even if still mindless. We have all heard people blame SUVs for accidents. It's not as if the SUV gets off scot-free! The SUV is often badly injured, sometimes fatally, in these accidents. "Totaled." The SUV is a victim as much as the humans injured. Those who blame the SUV for the accident are blaming a victim! Not to mention blaming an inanimate object. A hunter, such as Dick Cheney's friend, is injured in a shooting accident and some in the left wing immediately drag out the anti-gun rhetoric pile on hunters and shooters, though it is a hunter and shooter who is a victim here. They are blaming the victim! In a case such as the Duke lacrosse players and the stripper, it is hard to tell who is the victim. I think we have to wait on that one. But it should be perfectly acceptable to look at discrepancies in the stripper's story. This is not "blaming the victim." It is trying to prevent the victimization of the lacrosse players! Such selective application of the "you-can't-blame-the-victim" principle is rank hypocrisy. Being a victim does not confer sainthood! It is possible to be a victim in one sense and a foolish, irresponsible, dishonest, or even completely vile person in other ways. When someone accuses you of "blaming the victim," stop to consider whether they are just trying to squelch debate. ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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