August 19, 2004
WHY WASN'T IT CALLED THE "GREAT STATE" (via Tom Morin):
A painful anniversary (Thomas Sowell, August 17, 2004, Townhall)
The War on Poverty represented the crowning triumph of the liberal vision of society -- and of government programs as the solution to social problems. The disastrous consequences that followed have made the word "liberal" so much of a political liability that today even candidates with long left-wing track records have evaded or denied that designation.In the liberal vision, slums bred crime. But brand-new government housing projects almost immediately became new centers of crime and quickly degenerated into new slums. Many of these projects later had to be demolished. Unfortunately, the assumptions behind those projects were not demolished, but live on in other disastrous programs, such as Section 8 housing.
Rates of teenage pregnancy and venereal disease had been going down for years before the new 1960s attitudes toward sex spread rapidly through the schools, helped by War on Poverty money. These downward trends suddenly reversed and skyrocketed.
The murder rate had also been going down, for decades, and in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934. Then the new 1960s policies toward curing the "root causes" of crime and creating new "rights" for criminals began. Rates of violent crime, including murder, skyrocketed.
The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.
They tried to replace all the institutions of society with a state you could depend on and ended up with nothing but dependence on the State--it worked. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2004 8:45 AM
What value are long established insitutions? If the rationalists in power are promising things like "equality" and "economic democracy" along with their materialist allies emphasizing the primary importance of "stuff" and what they judge to be its more equitable distribution, the organic social insitutions whose origins can no longer be rationally explained become the problem rather than a moderating influence within the system of ordered liberty by the, apparantly, unplanned roles they have played within that system.
The real tragedy is the fact that the type of jokers who have saddled our country with such destructive experiments have learned nothing from their failures and would like the experiment to continue under their better guidance, of course. Like John Kerry, who fits the profile, they are incapable of learning from their mistakes or confronting their fallability. In light of the history of the last 30 years, which presidential candidate has been more consistently wrong than John Kerry and his supporters? Great Societists all.
Posted by: Tom C, Stamford,Ct. at August 20, 2004 11:46 AM