You don’t have to travel to a foreign country to visit the Third World — just head to Pennsylvania.
I visited Kensington, a northeast Philadelphia neighborhood, last month and saw firsthand our own country’s depraved reality.
Needles litter the streets.
People who look like extras in a zombie-apocalypse movie stagger around, drugged out of their minds.
Others gripped by drugs seem unconscious, their bodies contorted.
Everywhere, twisted cruelty masquerading as compassion — the hallmark of Democrats — is apparent.
The only thing the city has done is hand out kits to help keep the party going.
These “safe smoking” gifts are packed with Pyrex crack pipes, metal pipe screens, lip balm, alcohol swabs, lighters, chewing gum, condoms — and mouthpieces.
Wouldn’t want to give anyone COVID when you’re sharing a crack pipe, after all. Safety first!
It’s a shame those who obsess over climate change and Third-World poverty don’t care more about the misery on the streets right here at home.
Kensington is the antithesis of progress and optimism.
It doesn’t need to be this way. I am more convinced than ever we don’t have to be a nation in decline.
But we must make a choice — a choice to be better, to do better, and it starts with better policies.
Policies that protect people from dangerous poisons like fentanyl and xylazine, known as “tranq,” a brutal tranquilizer that rots the flesh and the brain.
Was this what the “Great Society” liberal hero Lyndon Johnson wanted?
We must stop incentivizing people to do the very things we don’t want them to do.
If we want people to work, stop paying them not to work.
If we want people to be clean and sober, stop handing out needles and crack pipes.
This is so simple, yet in the destructive culture of “harm reduction,” it has become taboo to speak these basic truths.
If your child was suicidal and picked up a gun, would you give him bullets?
The status quo is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting something other than even more tranq-doped zombies living and dying on the sidewalk.
I watched people forced to hopscotch over used needles to avoid getting jabbed, homeless people sweeping the sidewalk in front of their filthy tents under the deafening and disorienting roar of SEPTA trains overhead.
The extreme permissiveness in places like Kensington only drives up the number of homeless and addicts.
And if you think this could never happen to someone you know, as one mother who lost her child to fentanyl poisoning told me, “If we don’t fix this problem, your child is next.” She’s right.
Of course, the addiction, anxiety, depression and despair in Kensington, and every town in America, are just manifestations of a deeper decay in our nation’s spirit.
We find ourselves lost, unsure of our identity, unable to discern between reality and falsehood.
We must fill this void of meaning by rediscovering what it means to be American.
We must reclaim those now-almost-unutterable values that once defined us and can still shape our future.
Remember American principles before they all got canceled? Values like faith, family, patriotism, a one-tier justice system, meritocracy, the sanctity of the individual.
These unwavering truths have withstood the test of time and can revive places like Kensington, restoring them to the glory that lasted for nearly a century before decades of flawed policies brought them to their knees.
But perhaps most simply, we can stop paying people to become broken and stay broken.
Stop incentivizing them to become lifelong wards of the state, prisons and homeless shelters.
If we refocus on faith, family and truth, we will unleash the American spirit.
There were sparks of hope in Kensington: People offered medical attention and heartfelt prayers to those suffering.
I spoke to a young police officer with a bright smile and a grateful heart, proud to serve the community he grew up in, despite witnessing his partner get shot the week prior.
We can fix this. Decline is not inevitable — not even in Kensington.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a Republican candidate for president.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
