When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the British welfare regime in 1942, his goal was the "abolition of want" to be accomplished by "co-operation between the State and the individual." In attempting to insulate the citizenry from life's vicissitudes, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. As I write in my book: "Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity." The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate. Marriage is all but defunct, except for William and Kate, fellow toffs, upscale gays and Muslims. From page 204: "For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ's Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population."This is what I was getting at when I asked if socialism subverts the Nietzschean will-to-power. I believe that it does.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Yet Another Reason I Don't Support The Socialist Nanny-State
From the brilliant Mark Steyn:
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4 comments:
And it shows one of the many reaons why Lyndon Johnson is the worst President in this country's history...although B Hussein Obama is making a run for it.
"For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ's Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population."
While I know there are many who would like to believe this because in lets slavery and Jim Crow off the hook, the fact of the matter is that African American families were fragile at best after emancipation. In fact, Daniel P. Moynihan argued in 1964, the black family, marked by female-headed households, high illegitimacy and absent fathers, had been destroyed by slavery and left trapped in "a tangle of pathology" that impeded real progress for black Americans. And MLK agreed when he said about the black family, in 1966,"The shattering blows on the Negro family have made it fragile, deprived and often psychopathic."
You might be able to say that some aspects of the Great Society could have been designed better, but in no way can you say the it had much to do with the basic problems within the black family. And, certainly, the various Civil Rights Acts passed by LBJ did far more good for the Black family that any harm the Great Society may have done.
PS, Mike the B Hussein Obama tag is really childish.
PestoDave
Nobody's trying to let slavery and Jim Crow off the hook. But the difference in the numbers pre-Johnson and today is staggering, and no amount of liberal tap-dancing is changing that.
You are sure the differences in the numbers you are referring to are only correlated to LBJ?
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