Maggie's Farm

From Mead's Beyond the Big City Blues:

...we need to realize that many of the most pressing problems of the inner city cannot be solved by the government. We can find ways to decriminalize drugs and to reform the legal system so that fewer young people are incarcerated for long periods for non-violent offenses — but government cannot mend broken homes or put addicts in touch with a higher power able not only to ease their craving for drugs but to help them rebuild their lives. Government cannot take a nine year-old child who has never seen a healthy family and give the child the kind of psychological balance and strength children get from growing up in a loving and stable home. All the social workers in the world can’t fix this stuff.

What goes on in some of these families and communities after generations of breakdown and decay needs a kind of healing and care that government programs can’t provide — especially in a country like ours that for good and valid reasons has chosen to separate church and state. Some demons only come out with fasting and prayer, and the US government isn’t much good at either one.