Although in agreement with the historical facts presented, the fact that the question 'is the work done?' leads to bigger government left me empty and distraught. We have seen large failures and gross disincentives that the Federal government has maintained since the 60s. There are thinkers within the African American community (including Loury, Riley, Sowell) who have called out the perverse disincentives of these policies and the damage to the groups we need to help. It’s insanity and destructive to continue to build on these failed programs, rather than allowing school choice and building small and expanding social experiments which work (ref. Chetty, Move to Opportunity study).
I think a lot of the symptoms such as crime and poverty that get argued over in the cultural war are better addressed at their root cause, the destruction of the family. The problem with the Great Society programs is they end up incentivizing destructive behaviors. What is needed are the character traits to succeed in life, not a more comfortable underclass. I see no way to rebuild the family other than vouchers, likely run through black churches that are grounded in their community. Let the underclass make their own choice. To be blunt, let them choose between white saviors and black saviors.
"“Will you please put down the culture war cudgel and get busy building a decent society. People need healthcare. People need income security. People need education. People need housing. Our sentences are too long and our response to criminal deviation is too punitive, et cetera."
How is that possible? The right didn't start the culture war, the moderates, didn't start the culture war, it was the left. And they are the ones that continue to press the culture war.
When you talk BS about white privilege, that shuts the conversation down. When you are teaching CRT, woke BS where you are teaching grade school children that they are oppressors because they happen to be white, do you think we can then work together?
Most of this woke nonsense is nothing more than racism trying to divide people against each other. You want to move beyond the culture war, you need to kill the woke movement and banish is from respectable Democratic circles. Take a note from Bill Buckley and his treatment of the John Birch society
As for specific policy proposals. I think the two that would do the most good would be education and justice reform.
On education, there should be full school choice for all children. Its a national disgrace that we trap millions of kids in poor performing public schools. And no it's not a money issue. Per pupil spending has increased far faster than inflation, but test scores have by and large remained stagnant. Let the schools compete, and then close the poor performing ones.
Moreover, why are we only teaching kids half the year (180 days or so). My kids are home schooling. We aim for about 300 days of school per year (Sunday off, and a day here and there for national holidays).
I grant that would be hard nation wide, but it should still be somewhere around 240 to 250 days of school. Give them a week for Christmas and a week for 4th of July. Long periods of time without school destroy learning.
As for the justice system, we need to end the war on drugs. It's been 40+ years, we've locked up millions of people, spent over a trillion dollars, and anyone can get any drug they want at any time, even in prison.
Legalize and regulate everything. Keep taxes and regulation at a level that makes black markets unprofitable. This would decimate the gangs and mafia's primary revenue stream, and make it impossible to keep many of the people on their payroll. They would then be forced to seek gainful employment. It would also mean much less gang violence as they would no longer be fighting over drug turf.
It would also slow illegal immigration, as many of them are fleeing drug prohibition violence.
“Will you please put down the culture war cudgel and get busy building a decent society. People need healthcare. People need income security. People need education. People need housing. Our sentences are too long..."
What's being expressed here is an economic, class base argument. But what rages, and drives the politic of especially the Democratic party, are racial arguments. And the over class is delighted with racial arguments since not only do they get to expiate their white guilt, but their economic privileges are not in play.
I was reading in an interview with a writer who recently quit/pushed out, I believe, of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, who said that issues about class, financial inequality, etc are a very hard sell today in terms of doing an article. And it' well-known that journalism, American journalism especially, is the domain of basically, rich young adults who can afford to take low-pay work.
As has been said before, class uses identity issues as camouflage to obscure itself.
I've read that we spend an average of $14k annually per student. Considering the poor state of education in general and in the inner city in particular will the left support vouchers? Rather than argue for new spending on healthcare or housing can we address how we allocate funding for education now? Absent the left's willingness to cross the teacher's unions and leave the Democrat party it is more utopian posturing than concern for the underclass.
"People need healthcare. People need income security. People need education. People need housing."
This statement carries an underlying implication: the people who "need" these things expect to have them at someone else's expense. If someone wants the US to behave like, say, Norway, then show me the plan to 1) tax the US like Norway and 2) make it look like Norway. Those countries are very homogeneous culturally, there is a high level of trust in societies because people see themselves as Norwegians period, not as hyphenated people, and there is an understanding that the ship only moves if everyone grabs an oar.
We are nothing like that. Whatever shared American experience existed is barely hanging on today. The people who used to wax on about multiculturalism are the first to accuse someone of "appropriation" as if that's an outlier event. No, appropriation is a feature of a multi-culti society, not a bug. How can it be anything else? When people from other cultures introduce interesting things, imitation is a form of accepting those things, of saying "hey, that's pretty cool. I want to try that food/art/clothing style/etc."
When I hear that Glenn's wife, the Bernie Socialist, wants to see a social safety net as good as the Europeans have it, two things come to mind. The first is that Americans have an unrealistic viewpoint of what is offered in various European countries. Sweden has been generous in its benefits but over time has amended them to keep people motivated to work and participate in society. As of late, aspects of Sweden's welfare state, as well as Denmark & Norway are being challenged by immigration, rising crime, sluggish economic growth, and, perhaps surprisingly, the welfare model itself.
The second point is that of immigration. Northern European welfare states, like Sweden, Norway & Denmark, worked well because up until recently their societies were homogenous, Swedes lived in Sweden, Danes in Denmark, etc. There seemed to be an implicit societal contract of how to behave and what was expected of citizens; Everyone could identify with everyone else, ie they were all in it together, working together. Recent immigration from the Middle East and Africa and even Eastern Europe has changed that. New arrivals have not only placed financial pressure on these countries but increased and even disrupted the local way of life. Some question whether they should supporting new arrivals many who don't have the skills or desire to work (women in societies where they are expected to remain at home).
In the USA, over the past decade, there have been record numbers of refugees & migrants (legal & illegal) that exceed the highpoint of 1915 immigration levels as well. One could argue there are pluses to this vast new numbers arriving, but on the other than hand it also makes for torn and disassembled communities, so much so, that it can be hard to argue for a greater safety net because it would demand much higher taxes. It's not clear Americans want to pay for more immigration - to pay for someone they don't really know; as it is we've been told that it already costs about $100K to sustain each new arrival. In fact, polls show that Americans are not prepared to pay the high levels of taxes that European countries do to continue supporting this burden beyond the initial arrival costs. And finally, the development of welfare states in Northern Europe had a lot to do their Protestantism, much like early days in the USA. However, as Protestantism abates in the USA and is even reviled by a growing socialist contingent, it's not clear what ethos is going to replace moral guidance going forward.
I was in this poetry class. An older student, someone around Glenn’s age, so significantly older than the professor, did a poem about racism in my hometown. A younger student noticed a reference to the neighborhoods and asked, “are these the black neighborhoods?” My immediate reaction was to scoff, because everyone knows past Troost in KC is the black neighborhoods, it just seems thick to not know that. Now that I’m thinking about it, isn’t this the kind of thinking we eventually want? To hear about a black neighborhood and naively think, “what’s that?” Scoffing at naive ignorance and assuming the worst is text book bad faith. I have perhaps been too eager to please in doing this work.
Although in agreement with the historical facts presented, the fact that the question 'is the work done?' leads to bigger government left me empty and distraught. We have seen large failures and gross disincentives that the Federal government has maintained since the 60s. There are thinkers within the African American community (including Loury, Riley, Sowell) who have called out the perverse disincentives of these policies and the damage to the groups we need to help. It’s insanity and destructive to continue to build on these failed programs, rather than allowing school choice and building small and expanding social experiments which work (ref. Chetty, Move to Opportunity study).
I think a lot of the symptoms such as crime and poverty that get argued over in the cultural war are better addressed at their root cause, the destruction of the family. The problem with the Great Society programs is they end up incentivizing destructive behaviors. What is needed are the character traits to succeed in life, not a more comfortable underclass. I see no way to rebuild the family other than vouchers, likely run through black churches that are grounded in their community. Let the underclass make their own choice. To be blunt, let them choose between white saviors and black saviors.
"“Will you please put down the culture war cudgel and get busy building a decent society. People need healthcare. People need income security. People need education. People need housing. Our sentences are too long and our response to criminal deviation is too punitive, et cetera."
How is that possible? The right didn't start the culture war, the moderates, didn't start the culture war, it was the left. And they are the ones that continue to press the culture war.
When you talk BS about white privilege, that shuts the conversation down. When you are teaching CRT, woke BS where you are teaching grade school children that they are oppressors because they happen to be white, do you think we can then work together?
Most of this woke nonsense is nothing more than racism trying to divide people against each other. You want to move beyond the culture war, you need to kill the woke movement and banish is from respectable Democratic circles. Take a note from Bill Buckley and his treatment of the John Birch society
As for specific policy proposals. I think the two that would do the most good would be education and justice reform.
On education, there should be full school choice for all children. Its a national disgrace that we trap millions of kids in poor performing public schools. And no it's not a money issue. Per pupil spending has increased far faster than inflation, but test scores have by and large remained stagnant. Let the schools compete, and then close the poor performing ones.
Moreover, why are we only teaching kids half the year (180 days or so). My kids are home schooling. We aim for about 300 days of school per year (Sunday off, and a day here and there for national holidays).
I grant that would be hard nation wide, but it should still be somewhere around 240 to 250 days of school. Give them a week for Christmas and a week for 4th of July. Long periods of time without school destroy learning.
As for the justice system, we need to end the war on drugs. It's been 40+ years, we've locked up millions of people, spent over a trillion dollars, and anyone can get any drug they want at any time, even in prison.
Legalize and regulate everything. Keep taxes and regulation at a level that makes black markets unprofitable. This would decimate the gangs and mafia's primary revenue stream, and make it impossible to keep many of the people on their payroll. They would then be forced to seek gainful employment. It would also mean much less gang violence as they would no longer be fighting over drug turf.
It would also slow illegal immigration, as many of them are fleeing drug prohibition violence.
“Will you please put down the culture war cudgel and get busy building a decent society. People need healthcare. People need income security. People need education. People need housing. Our sentences are too long..."
What's being expressed here is an economic, class base argument. But what rages, and drives the politic of especially the Democratic party, are racial arguments. And the over class is delighted with racial arguments since not only do they get to expiate their white guilt, but their economic privileges are not in play.
I was reading in an interview with a writer who recently quit/pushed out, I believe, of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, who said that issues about class, financial inequality, etc are a very hard sell today in terms of doing an article. And it' well-known that journalism, American journalism especially, is the domain of basically, rich young adults who can afford to take low-pay work.
As has been said before, class uses identity issues as camouflage to obscure itself.
I've read that we spend an average of $14k annually per student. Considering the poor state of education in general and in the inner city in particular will the left support vouchers? Rather than argue for new spending on healthcare or housing can we address how we allocate funding for education now? Absent the left's willingness to cross the teacher's unions and leave the Democrat party it is more utopian posturing than concern for the underclass.
"People need healthcare. People need income security. People need education. People need housing."
This statement carries an underlying implication: the people who "need" these things expect to have them at someone else's expense. If someone wants the US to behave like, say, Norway, then show me the plan to 1) tax the US like Norway and 2) make it look like Norway. Those countries are very homogeneous culturally, there is a high level of trust in societies because people see themselves as Norwegians period, not as hyphenated people, and there is an understanding that the ship only moves if everyone grabs an oar.
We are nothing like that. Whatever shared American experience existed is barely hanging on today. The people who used to wax on about multiculturalism are the first to accuse someone of "appropriation" as if that's an outlier event. No, appropriation is a feature of a multi-culti society, not a bug. How can it be anything else? When people from other cultures introduce interesting things, imitation is a form of accepting those things, of saying "hey, that's pretty cool. I want to try that food/art/clothing style/etc."
When I hear that Glenn's wife, the Bernie Socialist, wants to see a social safety net as good as the Europeans have it, two things come to mind. The first is that Americans have an unrealistic viewpoint of what is offered in various European countries. Sweden has been generous in its benefits but over time has amended them to keep people motivated to work and participate in society. As of late, aspects of Sweden's welfare state, as well as Denmark & Norway are being challenged by immigration, rising crime, sluggish economic growth, and, perhaps surprisingly, the welfare model itself.
The second point is that of immigration. Northern European welfare states, like Sweden, Norway & Denmark, worked well because up until recently their societies were homogenous, Swedes lived in Sweden, Danes in Denmark, etc. There seemed to be an implicit societal contract of how to behave and what was expected of citizens; Everyone could identify with everyone else, ie they were all in it together, working together. Recent immigration from the Middle East and Africa and even Eastern Europe has changed that. New arrivals have not only placed financial pressure on these countries but increased and even disrupted the local way of life. Some question whether they should supporting new arrivals many who don't have the skills or desire to work (women in societies where they are expected to remain at home).
In the USA, over the past decade, there have been record numbers of refugees & migrants (legal & illegal) that exceed the highpoint of 1915 immigration levels as well. One could argue there are pluses to this vast new numbers arriving, but on the other than hand it also makes for torn and disassembled communities, so much so, that it can be hard to argue for a greater safety net because it would demand much higher taxes. It's not clear Americans want to pay for more immigration - to pay for someone they don't really know; as it is we've been told that it already costs about $100K to sustain each new arrival. In fact, polls show that Americans are not prepared to pay the high levels of taxes that European countries do to continue supporting this burden beyond the initial arrival costs. And finally, the development of welfare states in Northern Europe had a lot to do their Protestantism, much like early days in the USA. However, as Protestantism abates in the USA and is even reviled by a growing socialist contingent, it's not clear what ethos is going to replace moral guidance going forward.
I was in this poetry class. An older student, someone around Glenn’s age, so significantly older than the professor, did a poem about racism in my hometown. A younger student noticed a reference to the neighborhoods and asked, “are these the black neighborhoods?” My immediate reaction was to scoff, because everyone knows past Troost in KC is the black neighborhoods, it just seems thick to not know that. Now that I’m thinking about it, isn’t this the kind of thinking we eventually want? To hear about a black neighborhood and naively think, “what’s that?” Scoffing at naive ignorance and assuming the worst is text book bad faith. I have perhaps been too eager to please in doing this work.