The Road To Hell

A few weeks back there was an article on the front page of the WSJ about a Montevideo, Minnesota "Family" that took in a New Orleans family destitute because of hurricane Katrina.

Last week the Strib had basically the same story--minus many of the interesting details that the WSJ thinks it's readers are smart enough to handle--but that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to show what a perfect microcosm the story is for how Minnesota (and MPLS in general) takes in the poor of Chicago, Gary, Vietnam, Russia or wherever with the hope of giving them a new life and where those good intentions often lead to.

The story goes like this. A woman and her partner (btw, what did lesbians call their mates in the Old West Days--"pardner"?) offered to take in a mother and a child homeless from the hurricane in New Orleans. They were looking for two, but got eight instead. Apparently thinking that this would be a manageable situation, they added those eight people to the three kids they already had cobbled together from their own various broken marriages (apparently before they both became lesbians, who knows) and tried to make a go of things in Monetvideo.

At first, it was fun. Both families had much to learn from each other and the stale cliches taught by Diversity Educators seemed to be holding true.

In the first few weeks, the newness of the situation and the excitement of having the town rally around them helped things run smoothly. Donations of clothes, toys, furniture and money arrived every day for a time.

At night, Ryan Thornbury, 12, and Esaw Singleton, 11, would sneak out of bed and gleefully play video games.

Video games? I thought these people were poor.

I guess I need to update my understanding of "poor". But anyway, things went well for the first few weeks until an important disagreement threatened to blow the modern liberal dream apart. But what was the disagreement about? Religion? Politics perhaps? The lesbianism of the host women?

Nupe.

Having given up her office so Dot could have a bedroom, Tanya had tucked her desktop away in the laundry room so she'd have space of her own to cruise eBay, the online auction site.

After finding that the area didn't have radio stations playing the hip hop and rap that they liked, Nicole and Helen wanted to download music from the Internet. Tanya said no, partly to protect the computer from viruses and partly to preserve a teeny area of private space. Nicole and Helen didn't understand.

So things started to turn when the poor people demanded Itunes access? Do I understand this right? You might think there would fighting over something a little more substantial like the meager scraps of food in the house with that many poor people, but it was the lack of Jah Rule, Jay Z and D-O to the double G that caused the spat.

I'm not sure where access to rap music falls in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but I'm sure it's right up there.

So after this first fight, many more ensued with the police finally coming out for a domestic disturbance call.

Now the New Orleans family is moving out of Montevideo...to North Minneapolis.

Shortly before Halloween, Nicole Singleton found a Twin Cities church offering a north Minneapolis house rent-free for a year to hurricane survivors.

Dot and the kids arrived in the Twin Cities on Oct. 28. Their new home has a large dining room and kitchen and a big yard. The kids, she said, are settling in and enrolled in Minneapolis public schools. The family plans to stay in Minnesota.

This story mirrors the overall disaster that rolling out the welcome wagon for the poor has caused the state. Years ago, word got out that Minnesota offered higher than normal welfare and various other entitlement benefits. Soon, Greyhound after Greyhound of poor were rolling in from Chicago, Gary and points unknown. Soon after that Minneapolis got it's infamous moniker Murderapolis and the crime continues unabated to this day (see our colleague Rambix for the latest outrage).

You can almost hear the disbelief of the lefty-types who engage in the kind of thinking that has lead us to where we are: "But, but, we had good intentions!"

Update: More on this morality tale at Rambix and the Red Star.