Several years ago, Dr Daniels published a book called “Life at the Bottom” under the pen name Theodore Dalrymple. It addresses the same subject as this article, but in more depth. It is a profound book.
Yes, I believe this lecture stems from that material. Concur completely - it was a brilliant set of essays.
The biggest differences between the African poor that Dalrymple (I might as well continue using his pen name) worked with and the urban underclass that he dealt with in Great Britain mirror the differences between rural and urban poor in the United States: greater family solidarity in the rural areas, more prevalent secularization of the urban. These are similarities, not rock-solid identities, but it seems persuasive to me that in both cases the state has made considerable effort to suppress that family solidarity, either deliberately or through social programs "whose intentions are good," i.e. whose promoters figure replace the authority and disciplinary figure that is the father with something "better" of their own: the paternal state as well as the maternal one.
In practice the state has not the means to effect that sort of day-to-day supervision outside of a barracks arrangement such as that of ancient Sparta. The substitute is, as Dalrymple points out, easy and to hand:
By the time they are 15 or 16, twice as many children in Britain have a television as have a biological father living at home. The child may be father to the man, but the television is father to the child.
And the state is father to the television, and to that other quotidian manifestation of state presence, public education. Common to these is control, a control that the state finds more difficult to effect with a father as an intermediary. There is still, of course, the mother as the intermediary, control of whom may be effected through an environmental dosage of television. We see this expressed through celebrity worship, rabid consumer materialism, and an overall culture that emphasizes ubiquity over depth.
And just as the authority of father and mother threatens this sort of control, so does the authority of the church, any church. The state may partner with the church, or rather the mosque, or the state may attempt to supplant it altogether. Easy coexistence such as the one once present in the United States had to be established in the founding documents and furiously defended. That is why it is now such a cultural battleground in this country, and why Constitutional barriers are so important to keep inviolate. Or, depending on just how much state control you're after, to breach.