(Via Drudge) This week the city of Los Angeles opens its latest crowning achievement, the $17 million “Midnight Mission” homeless shelter, complete with a full gym, movie room, and hair salon. It’s never been easier to be homeless! If I lived in L.A., I’d sure be tempted to give up the daily grind and go watch free movies, eat free food, and enjoy free hair do’s all day.

I don’t pretend to be a great social architect but it seems to me that 17 million dollars could put a heck of a lot of homeless people in career training or create a fair amount of low-income housing. I’m not alone in this thought. Apparently the National Alliance to End Homelessness is pretty upset at this gross misappropriation. The organization’s president, Nan Roman says:

“Since the late 1980s, America has built a mammoth infrastructure of shelters and the number of homeless has gone up, not down. It’s a bit of the if-you-build-it-they-will-come phenomenon at work.”

I think it’s very telling that each great success story on the road to liberal socialism becomes a perfect picture of why liberal socialism doesn’t work. Give a man a fish and he’ll be back tomorrow with a dozen friends wanting more free fish. Where does it end?

When I was in junior college, I was part of a group of students from the Baptist Student Union that worked one night a month at Faith City Mission. The cool thing about Faith City was that it wasn’t free. If you came in to the mission for a hot meal and warm bed, you’d get it, but only after you signed in and got a packet containing info on various day-labor businesses in the area. If you wanted to stay another night, you could, but only if you brought back paper proof that you visited the job placement places and made an honest effort to find work. If you expect a man to learn to fish for himself, you need to give him incentive and make sure he says fed while he learns. Have I beaten that analogy enough for today? I think so.

Read the complete article here.