A Legacy of Clichés

By Thomas Sowell · Jul. 7, 2015

Discussions of racial problems almost invariably bring out the cliche of “a legacy of slavery.” But anyone who is being serious, as distinguished from being political, would surely want to know if whatever he is talking about — whether fatherless children, crime or whatever — is in fact a legacy of slavery or of some of the many other things that have been done in the century and a half since slavery ended.

Another cliche that has come into vogue is that slavery is “America’s original sin.” The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for fifty years. Catch phrases about slavery have stopped people from thinking, even longer than that.

Today the moral horror of slavery is so widely condemned that it is hard to realize that there were thousands of years when slavery was practiced around the world by people of virtually every race. Even the leading moral and religious thinkers in different societies accepted slavery as just a fact of life.

No one wanted to be a slave. But their rejection of slavery as a fate for themselves in no way meant that they were unwilling to enslave others. It was just not an issue — until the 18th century, and then it became an issue only in Western civilization.

Neither Africans, Asians, Polynesians nor the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere saw anything wrong with slavery, even after small segments of British and American societies began to condemn slavery as morally wrong in the 18th century.

What was special about America was not that it had slavery, which existed all over the world, but that Americans were among the very few peoples who began to question the morality of holding human beings in bondage. That was not yet a majority view among Americans in the 18th century, but it was not even a serious minority view in non-Western societies at that time.

Then how did slavery end? We know how it ended in the United States — at a cost of one life lost in the Civil War for every six slaves freed. But that is not how it ended elsewhere.

What happened in the rest of the world was that all of Western civilization eventually turned against slavery in the 19th century. This meant the end of slavery in European empires around the world, usually over the bitter opposition of non-Western peoples. But the West happened to be militarily dominant at the time.

Turning back to the “legacy of slavery” as an explanation of social problems in black American communities today, anyone who was serious about the truth — as distinguished from talking points — would want to check out the facts.

Were children raised with only one parent as common at any time during the first 100 years after slavery as in the first 30 years after the great expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s?

As of 1960, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent, usually the mother. Thirty years later, two-thirds of black children were being raised without a father present.

What about ghetto riots, crimes in general and murder in particular? What about low levels of labor force participation and high levels of welfare dependency? None of those things was as bad in the first 100 years after slavery as they became in the wake of the policies and notions of the 1960s.

To many on the left, the 1960s were the glory days of their movements, and for some the days of their youth as well. They have a heavy emotional investment and ego investment in the ideas, aspirations and policies of the 1960s.

It might never occur to many of them to check their beliefs against some hard facts about what actually happened after their ideas and policies were put into effect. It certainly would not be pleasant to admit, even to yourself, that after promising progress toward “social justice,” what you actually delivered was a retrogression toward barbarism.

The principal victims of these retrogressions are the decent, law-abiding members of black communities across the country who are prey to hoodlums and criminals.

Back in the 19th century Frederick Douglass saw the dangers from well-meaning whites. He said: “Everybody has asked the question, ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.” Amen

Census: 1 in 5 Americans On Welfare

Greece, here we come!

July 7, 2015 12:00 pm

One in five Americans participates in government assistance programs each month, according to the most recent data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Approximately 52.2 million (or 21.3 percent) people in the U.S. participated in major means-tested government assistance programs each month in 2012,” according to the Census Bureau’s report.

Means-tested programs include Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and General Assistance (GA).

The number of beneficiaries of these means-tested programs has increased significantly over the last decade. According to the Census, in 2004 there were nearly 42 million monthly recipients of these programs. Between that year and 2012, monthly participation increased by 24.9 percent.

In order to qualify for benefits from a means-tested program, an individual or family’s income must fall below a specified threshold.

“Participation rates were highest for Medicaid (15.3 percent) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program (13.4 percent),” the report said. Participation rates were lowest for housing assistance (4.2 percent), Supplemental Security Income (3.0 percent) and TANF, which includes general assistance (1.0 percent).

The Census collects this data by observing the number of months when individuals received benefits from one or more programs and measuring their entry and exit activity.

“Participation in government programs is dynamic,” said Shelley Irving, an analyst with the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division. “The Survey of Income and Program Participation shows how individuals move in and out of government programs and how long they participate in them.”

Most beneficiaries of these programs are dependent on them for up to four years. “The largest share of participants (43.0 percent) in any of the public assistance programs stayed in the programs between 37 and 48 months,” according to the Census. “Additionally 31.2 percent of people participated between one and 12 months between January 2009 and December 2012.”

Top ten unintended consequences of progressive rules and laws

By Bernie Reeves

Drum roll, please, for the top ten unintended consequences caused by progressive/radical rules and laws:

10. Decline of the bee population due to whirring noises from wind farms created by the urging of environmental activists who do not care if their initiatives upset the fragile balance of nature.

9. Devastation of huge swaths of the American West by wildfires, many caused by environmental laws that prevent clearing forest floors.

8. Government mandates that gasoline at the pump contain a percentage of ethanol derived from corn and wheat, triggering a serious increase in food prices during hard times for many Americans, and starvation in poor countries.

7. Refusal by Obama to allow passage of legislation to approve the Keystone Pipeline has resulted in an increase in train wrecks of trains carrying flammable and toxic crude.

6. The legality of gay unions upheld by the Supreme Court of the U.S. has encouraged a push to legitimize polygamy.

5. The world's record illegitimacy rate in the U.S. black community is largely due to the Great Society legislation of 1965 establishing Aid to Dependent Families welfare payments that required young mothers to be unwed, creating millions of kids with no fathers who join gangs to seek their identity.  

4. Also upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, Obamacare, born out of idealism and theory rather than facts, is fraught with unpredicted outcomes – including rises in health care costs; instability of health insurance firms, who are losing money and seeking mergers; companies laying off or not hiring new employees; and nationwide anxiety by ordinary citizens.

3. Congressional progressives’ idealistic desire to provide access to housing for all Americans by manipulating policies by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and advantage taken by investment and hedge funds – led to possibly the worst economic recession in U.S. history.

2. The idealistic decision by the U.S. to assist the Afghans in their struggle against the Soviet Union led to the most complicated diplomatic and military engagement in U.S. history, now involving the entire Middle East and terrorism.

1. The idealistic, theoretical action in the late 1970s by progressives in the mental health area to empty mental hospitals, saying the mentally ill can fit into society, leading to the homeless problem and alarming mass murders in the U.S. by mentally ill killers.

Difference between Democracy and Racism ...
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>>                         A Muslim refugee kid in Saskatoon asks his mother,
>>                         "Mama, what's the difference between Democracy and Racism?"
>>
>>                         Mother (in Burkha) - "Well, son, Democracy is when Canadian tax payers
>>                         work hard every day so that we can get all our benefits.....
>>                         you know, like free housing, free health care,
>>                         free education and grants to build Mosques and Community
>>                        Centers, more welfare payments than Canadian pensioners get,
>>                         and so on and so forth, you know? That's Democracy".
>>
>>                         "But Mama, don't the Canadian tax payers get angry about that?"
>>
>>                         "Sure they do!. That's what we call Racism.
>>



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>>                         Never more clearly & simply explain