The Left pretends to pity the plight of the people we used to call “vagrants” but are now required to call “homeless.” Their numbers keep growing – despite the fact that we keep throwing money at them and giving them free housing, free meals and other free stuff.

Let’s stop right there. That last sentence, expressed as I just expressed it, is easily recognized as a “Fox Butterfield.” He was a New York Times columnist who expressed puzzlement at the “paradox” that more criminals were being sentenced to prison even though crime was down.

After years of being puzzled by this paradox that he perceived, Butterfield finally acknowledged that he had confused the cause with the effect. It’s not that fewer crimes had caused more criminals to be sent to prison. That would indeed be a paradox. Rather, it was that more criminals being in prison had caused fewer crimes to be committed.   

Butterfield thus unwittingly gave his name to a comedic bit of mis-rhetoric and illogic. A “Fox Butterfield” is a statement expressing puzzlement because it confuses causes and effects. The true cause and effect are apparent to most people – but not to the person making the Fox Butterfield statement, because it is contrary to his belief system.

Something similar is at work in the issue of vagrants (which is not a four-letter word, by the way, and maybe that’s the reason Democrats don’t like it).

The Left pretends puzzlement about the apparent paradox that giving free stuff to vagrants for the purpose of escaping their vagrancy seems to produce more vagrancy, not less. If vagrancy is caused by vagrants losing their stuff, then shouldn’t it be remedied by giving them free stuff to replace what they lost?

Ah, but any person without a preconceived belief system sympathetic to vagrancy knows that it isn’t caused by losing one’s stuff. Rather, it’s caused by losing one’s mind. Usually to drugs, insanity or both. And so, it’s not a paradox that giving free stuff to vagrants fails to remedy their vagrancy – their minds, after all, are still missing in action.

In fact, giving free stuff to vagrants not only fails to help them, it actively hurts them. It enables them to continue their vagrancy.   

That’s what has happened in America over the last generation. Camping on the sidewalk and pooping in the gutter used to be against the law. It still is, but the Democrat mayors of big cities decided to break their oaths of office by allowing it anyway – and to reward the lawbreakers with free stuff for doing so.

Sure enough, but contrary to Democrat expectations borne of their erroneous belief system, the result was more sidewalk camping and gutter pooping, not less.

Contrast this with big cities in the rest of the world. Most are poorer than American cities, and in Europe they tend to be at least as Leftist as in America. But you seldom see vagrants. They’re simply not allowed.

Why did the Democrats choose to enable vagrancy in America?

Two reasons. First, many Democrats mistakenly thought it was the humane thing to do. In their erroneous belief system, they believed that vagrants are just like you and me, except they’ve had a bit of bad luck. They’ve lost their job through no fault of their own, but because of . . . you know . . . capitalism.  All that these unfortunates need, these Democrats believe, is a helping hand. And if we don’t give them that helping hand, they could well starve to death.

These beliefs are wrong in so many ways. Vagrants are nothing like you and me. They didn’t just lose their job; they’re almost all drug addicts or alcoholics or mentally ill or some combination thereof. A helping hand does not help them; it enables their misery and lets them inflict it on the rest of us. They won’t starve to death; nobody starves to death in America other than people who are literally too messed up to put into their mouths the food that is offered.

Thus, the first reason that Democrats enable vagrancy is simple ignorance on their part.

But the second reason is more sinister. Many Democrats enable vagrancy for the same reason they abolish the nation’s borders, decry merit as racist, preach that work is evil, undermine the family, mock religion, and tell us there are 72 genders.

It’s the same reason they want to cancel Sydney Sweeney for being too feminine and too white, neuter Bud Light for being too masculine and too redneck, and bury the Cracker Barrel logo for being too American.

It’s all because they loath America, Americans and Americana. Failing to destroy America militarily in two World Wars and one Cold War, they are now resigned to destroying her with a culture war from within. Indeed, surveys confirm that the defining trait of Democrats is their ambivalence (at best) for America.  

Many of these Democrats don’t want to help the American poor as much as they want to hurt the American “rich” – defined as everyone who has more money than they do. They would prefer a nuclear Armageddon destroying everyone over a prosperous economy lifting both rich and poor.

Of course, if they were to get their wish for Armageddon, they’d hate that too. They hate wherever they are and whomever they’re with.

They have no country, no religion, no gender, no history, no traditions, no happiness, and they disbelieve in family. You might generously call these sorrowful souls “homeless.”