No Sh*t

Power Line regular Scott Johnson notes articles advocating a return of the once-prevalent vagrancy laws. He quotes an editorial in the Claremont Review of Books by Charles Kesler which concludes:

We ought to consider what was lost when the courts discouraged Americans from thinking of “homelessness” in light of the old laws against vagrancy. Under that understanding, no one had a right to camp out indefinitely on public property, much less to defecate on it. Public property belonged to the public—to everyone—and couldn’t be privatized for the benefit of one or more vagrants, however poor or sick.

The Swiss understand this, as Americans once did. Why can’t we do so again? Mental hospitals and the poor farm managed most of the problem, kept it off our streets and parks and out of our neighborhoods. Police pushed the remaining hobo jungles into remote areas along rail right of way.