Coming Apart at the Seams: The State of (*****) America

[roo_ster]

http://www.aei.org/video/101414
(Yes, it is 86 minutes of lecture and Q&A.)

To nip the multi-cultist hyper-sensitive race-hustlers in the bud, the reason to control for race and use the white subset was twofold:
1. Take race out of the equation and use race to explain away his conclusions.
2. White Americans are the largest racial subset, so there is more data that is more consistent.
3. When racial comparisons are made, whites are the reference point.

Charles Murray's Thesis

The thesis of this book is simple. Over the last half-century the United States has developed a new lower class and a new upper class that are different in kind from anything America has ever known. The second contention of the book is that the divergence of America into these separate classes, if it continues, will end what has made America America …

It’s not the existence of classes that is new, but the emergence of classes that diverge on core behaviors and values …

The American project consists of the continuing effort, begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit. They can come together voluntarily to solve their joint problems. The polity based on that idea led to a civic culture that was seen as exceptional by all the world. That culture was so widely shared among Americans that it amounted to a civil religion: “the American way of life” — a phrase that we actually don’t hear much any more, but used to be taken for granted. That culture is unraveling …

America is coming apart at the seams: not seams of race or ethnicity, but of class. And that leads to the title of tonight’s lecture: “The State of White America, 1960-2010.” …

One of the curious things about the new upper class is precisely that they are behaving in all the right ways. They’re getting married, they’re working hard … They’re doing all the right stuff [but] they won’t dare say: “This is the way people ought to be.” They will not preach what they practice. I put this down to non-judgmentalism …

What made America unique?  Self-governing citizens running their own lives without hindrance or help from the government.  And the virtues that made such a thing possible.

Laws (and a Constitution) are a necessary but insufficient requirement.  A culture (behavior & values) that supports this is also required.

Key among the behaviors and values CM speaks of are industriousness, honesty church attendance, and marriage.  He has good company, as all the founders and early observers of the new republic also noted the vital nature of these.

[AJ Dual]

I can't watch the vid on this connection.

What I'd note is that Black Americans had HIGHER rates of two-parent families, church attendance, and LOWER rates of out of wedlock births.. BEFORE LBJ and his "Great Society".

The Welfare State undid everything the Civil Rights movement was trying to achieve, right at the moment of it's victory.

[MicroBalrog]

Laws (and a Constitution) are a necessary but insufficient requirement.  A culture (behavior & values) that supports this is also required.

And yet in every culture - in every culture - that these were introduced and followed there was always a growth in freedom and wealth over time. Even simply introducing democracy (which is not a Republic) and fair elections on a regular basis (and not Chinese elections) powers incredible progress.

Indeed, no country is as free as the United States - but the United States was not, until recently, as free as it is today. In many ways modern America is freer than the Founders' America.

Freedom is arguably also a technology. Just like firearms - that will function whoever aims the gun properly and pulls the trigger - separation of powers and the rule of law work, always - as they are working for the atheist Frenchmen, the Jewish Israelis, and many others.

Israel in particular had never had a 'tradition of liberty' and was not even a democracy in any reasonable sense up until the Mahapah (ruled by a single party and its officials appointed by a Tammany Hall process). It was populated by descendants of Soviet countries. Up until 1966, a fifth of its citizens could not vote based on their racial identity. And yet, as soon as elections became competitive, look at all the social and techological process. I rail a lot at ISrael for not being as free as a European first-world state, but in terms of world history it is amazing progress.

It is only when held up against a utopian standard that the United States is a crumbling edifice.

[TommyGunn]

...... It is only when held up against a utopian standard that the United States is a crumbling edifice.

Give Obama four more years and allow our debt to increase beyond it's current 14 trillion and our crumbling edifices will be plain for everyone to see .... utopia, dystopia ... whatever.

[Seenterman]

BEFORE LBJ and his "Great Society".

Don't forgot about the impact the War on Certain Drugs has had on the black community in regards to single parent households.

[roo_ster]

Don't forgot about the impact the War on Certain Drugs has had on the black community in regards to single parent households.

About zero impact.

The black (and lower class white) communities manage to craft single parent households just fine on their own.