Free Republic

April 14, 2008, 6:00 a.m. The Hispanic Family: The Case for National ActionLooking at and for honest numbers. By Heather Mac Donald Those of us who have documented the growing underclass culture among second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans have grown accustomed to being called bigoted “xenophobes� by open-borders conservatives. For some reason, these same conservatives don’t object to anyone decrying the consequences of black illegitimacy rates, or the toll of black gang culture on community life. But point out the high Hispanic illegitimacy and school drop-out rates, or the march of ever-younger Hispanics into gangs, and you can be...

I've been hearing rumors for a couple of weeks now that New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is considering running for Governor. I finally found a news outlet that confirms this rumor, thanks to freelance journalist Jason Berry, who appeared on Informed Sources last night to predict that Nagin will run for Governor. Hat tip to Library Chronicles. As an aside, is this Jason Berry the author of Amazing Grace, an account of Charles Evers' run for Governor in Mississippi back in 1972? But back to the issue at hand - Ray Nagin running for Governor of Louisiana. This makes...

Nachum Shifren is an ordained rabbi in Los Angeles who spent 18 years of his life as a secondary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was also known as the "Surfing Rabbi" because of his abilities as a former professional surfer. He is quite familiar with youth culture and can be a pretty hip fellow -- despite his long beard, yarmulke and phylacteries that hang from his waistband. His level of coolness, however, never prepared him for a public school system where he received a death threat in class by a student and, on another day,...

WASHINGTON -- Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing. White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than blacks and 40 percent higher than Hispanics last year, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. White adults were also more likely than black and Hispanic adults to have college degrees and to own their own homes. They were less likely to live in poverty. "Race is so associated with class in the United States that it may not be direct discrimination, but it still matters...

In the West, gradual de-industrialization has created a new underclass of the unproductive and intellectually depraved. The spiritual cousin of the American phenomenon of "white trash," these strangers in their own land have become a serious threat to democracy. The modern-day member of the underclass is not hungry. He has a roof over his head, he is not disproportionately vulnerable to illness and he even has a bit of cash in his pocketbook. In every Western European country, he is both a citizen and a beneficiary of the welfare state, even if the state's services are no longer as generous...

THE HALLMARK OF THE UNDERCLASS Daily Policy Digest ECONOMIC ISSUES Thursday, October 06, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Versions of every program being proposed by the administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have been tried before and evaluated. We already know that the programs are mismatched with the characteristics of the underclass, says Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. Job training? Unemployment in the underclass is not caused by lack of jobs or of job skills, but by the inability to get up every morning and go to work. A homesteading act? The lack of home ownership is not caused by...

Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible--Democrats who are rediscovering poverty and blaming it on George W. Bush, or Republicans who are rediscovering poverty and claiming that the government can fix it. Both sides are unwilling to face reality: We haven't rediscovered poverty, we have rediscovered the underclass; the underclass has been growing during all the years that people were ignoring it, including the Clinton years; and the programs politicians tout as solutions are a mismatch for the people who...

Has a fairer America also become an America with less social mobility? That is the uncomfortable question raised by John Parker's long American survey in The Economist last month. "A decline in social mobility would run counter to Americans' deepest beliefs about their country," Parker writes. "Unfortunately, that is what seems to be happening. Class is reappearing in a new form." This was the conclusion, as well, of a recent series of articles in The New York Times -- although, as the Times and Parker both note, polls show that Americans think their chances of moving up are better than...

The children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent make up a quarter of all British medical students, 12 times their proportion in the general population. They are likewise overrepresented in the law, science, and economics faculties of our universities. Among the Indian immigrants who arrived in the country with next to nothing, moreover, there are now reportedly some thousands of millionaires. Despite its reputation for being ossified and class-ridden, then, Britain is still a country in which social mobility is possible—provided, of course, that a belief that Britain is an ossified and class-ridden society doesn't completely stifle personal effort. It...

That the British are now a nation of drunken brutes, justly despised throughout the world wherever they congregate in any numbers, is so obvious a fact that it should require no repetition. A brief visit to the centre of any British town or city on a Saturday night - or indeed, almost any night - will confirm it for those who are still in doubt. There they will see scenes of charmless vulgarity, in which thousands of scantily clad, lumpen sluts scream drunkenly, and men vomit proudly in the gutters. The Government, whose solution to any social problem is to...

One would think that "standing up for a stronger, more secure nation" would also include protecting our borders against the massive onslaught of illegal aliens and tons of illegal drugs entering with near impunity. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The federal government talks of terrorism. Well, when American citizens are not able to walk the streets of major cities because gangs of illegal aliens, not police, control those streets, we class that as terrorism. That came about, of course, because of the negligence of the central government. Our country's borders have major holes through which thousands of...

P>The cover of the 2000 edition of this book states, "THE BOOK THAT HELPED MAKE GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENT." No one will accuse either the author or publisher of being modest. It is hard to imagine a book making a man President, but many do believe this book influenced the election. In any case, President Bush said this book was second to the Bible in his thinking about social policy. Bush strategist, Karl Rove, called the book the roadmap to "compassionate conservatism." When originally published in 1993 the book seemed heretical but now it seems prophetic. Regardless of whether it...

Everyone knows la douce France: the France of wonderful food and wine, beautiful landscapes, splendid châteaux and cathedrals. More tourists (60 million a year) visit France than any country in the world by far. Indeed, the Germans have a saying, not altogether reassuring for the French: “to live as God in France.” Half a million Britons have bought second homes there; many of them bore their friends back home with how they order these things better in France. But there is another growing, and much less reassuring, side to France. I go to Paris about four times a year and...

The View From 'White Man's World' Brothers, I'm sure that you've read all the stories, seen all the documentaries, and have watched more episodes of 'COPS' and 'America's Most Wanted' than you would want to admit. Nevertheless, our young men--and now our young women--are being shipped off to 'do time' in the juvenile justice system. And, we can't seem to stop them. Many have friends who 'have a taste for crime' and draw them in. Others have been 'soft handed' by 'sympathetic' judges, caseworkers, and cops. Still others have parent(s) who quickly 'take their side' against ANY authority figure; be...