I listened to an interview of Jason Riley on Uncommon Knowledge about his book False Black Power. He was interesting enough that I went looking for his books. The one I found was Please Stop Helping Us. I would recommend the book as well as interviews on Uncommon Knowledge.
In the first few pages he made a comment that caught my attention.
“Have popular government policies and programs that are aimed at helping blacks worked as intended?” p. 3His answer, being a gentleman, was no, they have not. He spent the book looking at the programs and the results. I found nothing to surprise me there but I would have a different view that he did. I do not have to be a gentleman. My answer to his question would be “Yes”. They have worked exactly as intended, but I am a skeptic about the motivations of liberals.
The popular programs that he was talking about were all designed to get the government involved in running the lives of Americans. The ultimate goal was to destroy personal initiative and responsibility so that people would learn to love Big Brother. The first target was black Americans but they have been expanding their reach and scope ever since.
Two of the data points that were not new to me involved the total reversal in the black family and the unemployment rates. If you are not familiar with those let me paraphrase because the numbers are slightly different depending on whom is being quoted. In 1960 before Lyndon Johnson introduced the War of Poverty, 80% of black children were born into homes with a married father and mother. Today 80% are in single parent household, mainly single mothers and mainly born out of wedlock. Unemployment was lower before Johnson decided to help and has gotten worse every time the government tried to help more.
There was a lot more but my basic point is that these people knew exactly what they were doing. They still do and are on a roll. I hope we wake up or run out of money soon.
Riley, Jason. Please Stop Helping Us. New York: Encounter Books, 2014.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.