Posted on 03/20/2015 2:58:11 PM PDT by TBP
Perhaps the decisive factors in combating poverty and enabling upward mobility were not economic but cultural — the habits, mores and dispositions that equip individuals to take advantage of opportunities.
This was dismaying because governments know how to alter incentives and remove barriers but not how to manipulate culture. The assumption that the condition of the poor must improve as macroeconomic conditions improve was to be refuted by a deepened understanding of the crucial role of the family as the primary transmitter of the social capital essential for self-reliance and betterment.
Family structure is the primary predictor of social outcomes, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan knew in 1965.
Fifty years ago this month, Moynihan, then a 37-year-old social scientist working in the Labor Department, wrote a report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
And of course the one thing you CAN NOT CRITICIZE is someone else’s ‘culture’.
Moynihan certainly could say some very good things. Too bad he was such a disappointment as a (liberal Democrat) senator.
Especially since he ousted Senator James L. Buckley.
Some of us were rooting for Abzug in that primary. Had she won, Buckley (according to polls) would even hve carried the city.
Back in the day, and I was, what, six in 1965; Moyanahan was a damn democrat, but are the damn democrats Of yesteryear the same as the Damn democrats of today?
Not hardly. ( I’m not giving Nazi Pelosi a pass - an air headed girl then, a air headed old hag today)
Whatever his political faults, the man had at least some semblance of critical thinking and laying things out as he saw them. I can disagree with him on a lot of things, but he was spot on, on this.
And he was someone you had to respect as an honest intellectual, even when you strongly disagreed.
Pelosi’s daddy was mayor of Baltimore.
We now have wealthy wealthy people behaving like street thugs.
I've heard that bad money drives good money out of circulation.
Bad culture seems to drive away good culture.
Yep.
There are some things we can do to incentivize culture change, but most of it has to be generated within the culture that is being changed.
One thing is to require naming the father when a woman comes in for AFDC, then garnishing his wages (assuming he has any) unless he marries her and stays married to her until the last kid is 18 or leaves the house.
Not a panacea, but a step in the right direction.
Moynihan was a decent man and politician, but he was also at the spearhead of the 1980’s drive to abolish key internal security sections of the old Walter-McCarren Act (Immigration and Nationality Act), which governed who would be allowed to enter the US on a visa.
Moynihan believed in the free travel rights of people, esp. immigration and visiting rights. Nothing wrong with that but the elimination of these key internal security sections allowed Communist cause supporters and even sympathizers for international terrorist groups, to get travel visas to come into the US unless they had or were preparing an act of terror against the US.
Also leading in this elimination effort were Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md), the House Whip or Majority leader, and who is dumb as a doorknob, and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), who apparently thought there weren’t enough homosexuals in the US to satisfy him. (Frank also had a record of supporting some Communist party (CPUSA and/or SWP or even the WWP) fronts).
At least in the case of Moynihan, he was defending a “freedom” right, being totally unaware of the efforts of the communists and their liberal allies to open the immigration doors to their overseas comrades (i.e. supporters of the Communists in Cuba, Chile, the then Soviet Union and its fronts, esp. the World Peace Council), Palestinian terrorist group supporters (PFLP - Habash, Marxist and Moscow trained; PFLP-DF, Hawatmeh, Marxist and possibly Moscow trained; PLO - Arafat, Moscow trained and supporter of their fronts); and assorted Marxists from Greece, No. Vietnam, Red China, etc.
The above is what we call the “back story” or the unwritten story behind the main story. Where I come from, it is also called a wakeup warning and the truth. Guys like Hoyer and Frank couldn’t give a damn about the truth of the threats to the US inherent in their actions (i.e. the LA 8 case).
Now you know the whole truth.
Well, I still wish Jim Buckley had beaten Moynihan in 1976.
Moynihan stomped his foot on the package Senator Helms prepared which showed the communist connections of MLK.
Pelosi’s chickshit brother was also the mayor of Baltimore during the 1968 riots wherein he deliberately allowed black rioters (both from the City and from other states), to burn out small Jewish businessmen/stories in East Baltimore (my old hood where we had a family business, protected by the guys (white and black) who worked at the liquor store a few doors down the street.
Friends of mine with direct contacts in both police and fire department intelligence told me (and showed me) evidence of how the riots were deliberately planned and how the police/FD saw out-of-state-cars dropping off stones/rocks at predetermined places for the rioters to use.
D’Alessandro Jr (or the III or 8th) totally caved into the Black political machine in Baltimore by promising them not to use force to stop the rioters. That action turned a lot of traditionally Democrat-voting Jewish voters (in my parent’s voting district) to abandon the Democrat Party) including our rabbi (Orthodox) who blasted the mayor by asking our congregation: “Where was our good friend the mayor when they were burning down our stores”?
That got a nearly unanimous “yeah” reply from those at shual that night.
Also, liberal Jews split their vote between two Democrat candidates (Sam Freidel, D-Md, US House) and Marxist prof. Parren Mitchell -who won Freidel’s seat), giving Mitchell enough votes to oust Freidel and to defeat a dumbassed Republican candidate who took enough votes away from Freidel to assure that Mitchell would win.
Mitchell, a hardcore red, eventually became a Soviet policy conduit in terms of introducing legislation that would have significantly disarmed the US as Moscow embarked on a major nuclear armament buildup. There is some evidence that he had ties to an old Soviet spy, Victor Perlo, and got him a spot to testify before a congressional committee hearing on the economy. Perlo became the Chairman of the CPUSA’s Economic Commission. Just for your information - his daughter-in-law is Joelle Fishman, New Haven Center, Conn. and CPUSA leader there. She has very strong and documented ties to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct, New Haven district) (www.keywiki.org, search under her name for the details and photos).
Welcome to the wonderful world of subversion.
Oh, a PS. If you saw the sponsors list of the “tribute” to Parren Mitchell when he retired from Congress, you would see a “who’s who” of Baltimore’s Democrat elite, including Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md). The failed to vette the event because the tribute flier said that the money raised there would be for the Peoples Weekly World, the official paper of the CPUSA.
In other worlds, the Baltimore/Md. Communist Party sponsored the “tribute” for Mitchell and used it as their fundraiser for their newspaper, and the Dems were stupid enough to do that without checking out the “who” of the sponsorship.
It’s a start.
My favorite Moynihan quote, “Politics is about who gets how much and when.”
Senator Moynihan was the real deal, so are people like Camille Paglia. Yes they are liberal, but worthy opponents in an otherwise crowded field of ‘players’.
George Will has always talked about Senator Moynihan with a deserved respect. I believe William Buckley did too. I just wish he was more of a thorn in his own party instead of getting carried down the road via obstructionists.
Back when ‘Negro’ wasn’t a racist word.
Moynihan was a classic academic. He was a thinker, not a man of action. He couldn't bring himself to confront and fight the wrong ideas in his own party.
We all do. And it could have been worse.
I am proud to have helped Senator Buckley get elected.
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