The Problems with Liberalism, Part 7

7. A liberal believes that letting the mentally ill wander the streets and sleep under a bush is a sick society.

• Why are the mentally ill wandering the streets? The old system, where the mentally ill were institutionalized for their own protection and safety was challenged by the left. Our current system allows only limited placement of those truly dangerous to themselves or others.
• The mentally ill have been given freedom by the courts. Some choose to live in group homes, with family or other options. Some choose to wander the streets.
• Thanks to this fine policy, the mentally ill are living the life of freedom but their freedom costs us all. They accost people on the streets, soil public and private facilities, and are often incapable of taking care of their health issues, leading to increased hospitalizations due to inablility to adhere to good health practices. One of DocBrain's homeless patients, a burly young man, just died a few weeks ago in status epilepticus, continuous seizures that could have been prevented had he agreed to letting family or friends help him.
• The sickness of society is due to the liberals who devised this fine policy of not prototyping it and/or thinking it through before implementing freedom for yet another group of "victims" of society.
• I am curious as to what solution a liberal would have that would restrict the freedom of a victim group. Since the mentally ill do not form a very grateful or reliable voting bloc, I am not surprised that liberals now oppose the freedom they imposed on these people.

In summary, some mentally ill wander the streets (ie, many of the homeless). How happy they are with their lifestyle? Many have options but choose to continue their homeless lifestyle. The solution, if one is needed, could be the typical liberal command and control, but that is what got them into this situation to begin with. The easy answer is the one that the liberals overturned. The harder one is to get the homeless mentally ill to choose a different option. And we haven't even addressed the homeless poor, victims of a society that uses government to decide who is worthy of entitlement rather than the good hearts and charity of the citizens.