Really good article. I don't think black single mothers necessarily raise bad kids. I know a couple who get along a lot better without their spouses.
Having both parents didn't stop Mr. Bush being drunk for 20 years. Economics and ghetto-isation makes more of a diference than parenting no?
I don't think you judge parenting by every single failure a child makes. Bush was not "a drunk." He drank too much when he did go out. My brother is a recovering alcoholic and for 20 yrs he drank too much. but you would never have known it. He was still a good person. He did his job and was well liked and all that.
If we judge parenting by each failure on the part of the child, then no one would be a good parent, would they?
But there is a big difference between failures and criminal behavior, for example.
My grandma was a single mother (although not black, she was poor) and she raised fine children. But the overall picture is what we look at. And that shows that there is a clearly a deep problem with children (espeicaly the black males, not having a father in the home.
I think good parenting can overcome ecomomics and environment almost every time, but it is VERY difficult.
Can someone explain the actual, practical right wing plan to decrease poverty - beyond lectures about morality?
I mean, you've been in absolute power for five years and claim to be the true compassionate ones.
So WHAT'S THE PLAN?
Stay in school.
Don't Have sex before you marry.
Don't marry before you have a job and can afford a home and car.
When you have children, let one parent stay home for the first ten years.
Don't vote democrat.
Any questions, Tony?
Uh, yes, Walter. Those are completely unenforceable and some of them, particularly the one advocating one party rule of a free democracy, are asinine. Therefore they do absolutely NOTHING to address poverty. They are hollow moral posturing.
I ask again, as makers of government policy, how does the one party rule of Republicanism propose to address poverty in the richest nation in the world?
And why have they so far done NOTHING ?
Exactly Tony, they are unenforceable, because the govt shouldn't enforce them. That is why we don't have a GOVERNMENT PLAN. The only thing Govt can do is NOT enable the cycle of poverty through welfare programs that clearly don't work and only discourge people from working.
It's all about personal responsiblilty. Republicans believe in it and Democrats (with good intentions) keep the poor from learning that every day.
So you hand down a series of moral pronouncements, some of them (like one parent not working for at least 10 years) are impossible in our economy for most people...and you watch people inevitably fail. Because you think it is immoral to spend money improving education for poor children, or making sure they have safe housing or good health care - in short, because you believe children should be penalized for the failures of their parents - you end up with an endlessly perpetuating cycle of poverty.
How does this differ from the results of the Great Society? The only difference seems to be that you add moral condemnation on top of all the other sorrows poor people must endure.
Tony, you guys had absolute power for the first 2 years under Clinton. Plus you had the media and most of the culture.
Did you wipe out poverty?
P.S. We've spent trillions on the War on Poverty. Trillions. How's it going, Tony? Do you guys ever stop to think, "hey, maybe this isn't the answer." Of course not.
Walter,
That is pretty damn good plan....
Jill, dear...I have not said I know the answer. I am asking you conservatives who seem to know it all what is YOUR answer? Walter and RWS have said their answer is moral lectures and condemnation when they inevitably fail. What is YOUR answer?
staying at home with your kids is a moral pronouncement???
We couldn't afford for me to stay home when we had our first child. But I did it anyway. We had old cars, we didn't have cable. We never went out to eat. I bought furniture at garage sales. But guess what?
I was happy and my kids sure as hell didn't care about the "things," they only cared that I was there.
We have literally thrown TRILLIONS of dollars at education and nothing changes in the poor communities. We have proven that those kids in poor communities who have the opportunity to go to Catholic schools do SO MUCH better. So it is clearly not the money, but the ATTITUDE and disipline of the school. But Democrats fight vouchers every day that prevent the poor from choosing the schools that would help them the most. All because yall are beholden to the NEA. People like Clinton, Gore, and Kerry can send their kids to private school, but heaven forbit the poor they supposedly represent be given that chance. Hypocrites.
Thomas Jefferson was absolutely certain of the need for PUBLICALLY FUNDED education "to avail the commonwealth of those talents and virtues which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as rich, and which are lost to their country by the want of means for their cultivation."
I thought Conservatives considered themselves Originalists. Seems your true agenda is to dismantle our democracy, starting with this most central principle -free public education for all children.
Plus , RWS wake up. Your people WON on the voucher thing. It's there in the useless NCLB which is being used to starve public schools in poor districts as we speak. Where are the results?
Parents staying home? Tell that to the working poor, where FIVE minimum wage jobs - full time - are needed to support the average family of four. You really need to step out of your bubble, RWS. Even if you used to be less rich than you are now, you have NO concept of what poverty is.
Thomas Jefferson didn't forsee how liberals would screw up education and everything else they touch.
Jill, give me the conservative plan for PUBLIC education. PUBLIC, as Jefferson said was ESSENTIAL to a free democracy. Remember, now, conservatives are originalists, so don't go rewriting the founding fathers. How should PUBLIC education be restructured according to conservatives, to provide equal opportunity for ALL American children?
If I get one honest, fact based, practical response, I will be shocked.
Let conservatives take over the curriculum, textbooks, let them cut all the touchy feeling "let's let the kids feel good about themselves" crap and we may have a good start.
And you can throw all the money into education you want, but if you have no discipline in the school, then you've got problems. And it's liberalism, my dear, that has started us down the path of discipline being off limits.
Tony, this is pretty basic stuff. Conservatives have been railing against these things for years. Where ya been?
As I've noted in other posts, the absolute WORST kids in my area are those from the strictest conservative homes. They're the first to start drinking, to get DWIs, to use and sell pot, etc. Just this past weekend a neighbor, raised in a two family Catholic Republican home, was caught on video at the local movie theater vomiting, falling down, with vodka bottle falling out of his shirt, and his baggy pants literally falling off and tripping him. The idea that any one style of morality or parenthood will produce a predictable result is asinine. In fact, many believe that harsh discipline in and of itself creates disciplinary problems.
How many children have you raised Jill?
I've got four of them, all gold star... athletically, intellectually, morally. They get 5s on their APs, 1400-1500 on their SATs - nothing touchy feely about any of that. All volunteer in the community - scouts, human rights club, Habitat, Red Cross, volunteer fire dept. All have what you'd consider to be "liberal" politics, and are indeed very politically active.
Your stereotypes are ridiculous. Why don't you cut the crap and give me some REAL examples of conservative policy to improve education?
Perhaps if they taught ID in school instead of secular Darwinian Theory kids would start behaving like good Christians!
Tony,
where is NCLB? We certainly have never won the voucher thing. This is needed for poor districts.
I am happy for your success with your children, but I am sure that had everything to do with your love and nothing to do with your poiltics.
I have great kids too, (which blows your theoryof the Catholic republicans) but I will save the bragging, some say I do too much of it here.
I may not have been that poor, but I have worked with the very poor through healthe and human services volunteer work, so I do know a bit about it.
For some background on what Charles Murray is writing about, see one of his earlier essays on this very topic, The Advantages of Social Apartheid. There are other articles by Murray related to this subject in the upper right corner of the page, when you click on the link ("The Hallmark of the Underclass," "The Inequality Taboo"). Charles Murray is a badass. He would make a great Secretary of Health and Human Services. Too bad his name hasn't been suggested.
Tony,
I don't claim to know what the "conservative" plan to end poverty is, nor do I understand the importance of discerning between which plan is liberal, which is conservative, and which fits some other label. But, I think that your fixation on those labels is an indication that you are less interested in a solution (possibly because you don't think that a solution will ever come about) and more interested in slinging mud.
I do have my own insights into what causes poverty. When a lifestyle that does not require personal responsibility or working for a living is subsidized, then it will be encouraged, it will continue, and it will propagate. In this country, this is called the welfare state. To demand money that you have not earned is flat out immoral. To use the government to that end is legal plunder. Some people call it stealing. Others call it welfare. Some politicians call it "entitlements" and still other politicians call it "rights" which may be the most perverse disfigurement of that word that is possible.
In my opinion, a pretty common sense solution to reducing poverty would be to dismantle the welfare state. In order for people to be able to survive without government, we need to eliminate taxes for people who earn less than $50,000 per year (that accounts for a very, very small percentage of tax revenue, while taking a very, very large portion of those peoples' paychecks) and eliminate regressive taxes like FICA taxes and gas taxes.
Of course, this will never happen. And even if it did, poverty would not totally disappear. No government program would ever end poverty completely and no divorce of government from the solution would end poverty. And the magic answer is not some grey area in between. Some people simply choose to not work and rely upon the kindness of strangers. Our federal government has taken that concept to the multi-trillion dollar extreme and encouraged many to join the ranks of those parasites. Some others find themselves in bad financial situations due to poor fortune and bad decisions. For the latter, rather than handing them a government check, we should simply stop garnishing their wages. That way, they can save for a rainy day, draw interest on their savings, and not waste time sitting in a gov't welfare office to ask for a handout.
Because government is not the solution to poverty and can only reduce poverty by reducing the degree to which it encourages it, it is important for our society to attempt to address the root causes of poverty, rather than addressing the symptoms and the catalysts. As a society, we need to embrace better role models and stop being so casual about having children out of wedlock and having children before you put yourself into a financial position from which you can raise them.
Based upon what you've written, you've raised some great kids. Why not encourage others to do the same?
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