God and Man and the Inner City
Over on the member feed, Kennedy Smith links to a Walter Russell Mead followup on the problems of our cities. He says that the "two big mistakes" Americans make are the assumptions that the problems are mostly about race and that "that they can be solved without God." Here's a sample paragraph:
There are some who blame all these problems on the culture of welfare and entitlements. Those can cause problems, but the tragedy of inner city social meltdown is not just an American problem and we can’t just look at American history and policy to understand what is going on. In Mexico, South Africa, Russia, Brazil and many other countries the mix of large cities and rootless young people without the academic or personal skills needed for success creates a dangerous social stew. Introduce the illegal drugs business into those settings, and you get the too familiar mix of gang warfare, drug addled youth and organized crime bosses who make Al Capone look like Little Lord Fauntleroy.
I have a little quibble: having spent time in Asia and seen very successful cities -- Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo -- that don't have these problems, I believe that he assumes a commonality that doesn't really exist. The successful cities tend to have law and order, property rights, and limited government. The examples outside the US he cites are places where government interferes greatly in the private sector, and we know from experience that the more interfering the government gets, the more inefficient it gets. But that's just an aside in a post that should get far more attention.
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Sep '10
Re: God and Man and the Inner City
I saw that article, too and read it with great interest. I ended up pretty disappointed. Money is a marker of behavior and poverty an indicator of either a really terrible start in life or poor choices. Mr. Mead went out of his way to absolve the folks in the inner city of their sins. That's typically not a good idea in the absence of remorse. What is lacking, IMO, and was not strongly pointed out in that article, is the societal structure of morality that religion gives, one which allows you to differentiate between right and wrong.
Jun '10
Re: God and Man and the Inner City
When you divide the poor into the deserving poor and the undeserving poor (as government never does,) then you get a lot of poor people trying to become part of the "deserving" class. It serves the purpose of a swift kick in the pants. You shape up first, and then you get the help. Private institutions that help the poor used to do that.
Jul '10
Re: God and Man and the Inner City
I've often observed that most of our political and many of our social ills are rooted not so much in race as they are the result of egalitarians' attempts to solve racial and economic disparities.
Apr '11
Re: God and Man and the Inner City
Which is another way of saying Man trying to be God?
Jan '11
Re: God and Man and the Inner City
If Gene Rivers had been picked up for smoking a joint at the wrong time and the wrong place, and done jail time, would that have been better for America?
Do you think that America would have been well-served if Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama, who have all admitted using illegal drugs, had been arrested and incarcerated for doing so? (Thanks, David Boaz)
How about you, dear reader? Would you have profitted from being busted in the Drug War, like some 15-year-old inner-city black kid?
Goose. Gander?
Politicians cannot lead religious revivals. Forget that.
What the Republican Party should do in order to make real inroads into America's urban wastes - wastes deliberately created by Democrats - is to promote freedom and responsibility. And a major plank in that platform should be the end of the interminable, ineffectual and counter-productive Drug War, a war which like all other wars always benefits the state.
The black church produces fine grandmothers. Republicans should appeal instead to black men. And the first way we will do that is by taking the boot of the Drug War - and all it engenders - off the necks of young black men.