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The Nation's Pulse
When Men Won’t Work
Who will teach our urban youth the value of hard work?
It is a familiar sight here in the inner-city: young men in the prime of life aimlessly hanging out on stoops at midday, smoking and listening to hip hop music.
Government statistics tell only half of the story. One in five American men does not work. It is worse in my hometown of St. Louis where the jobless rate for black men without a high school diploma reached 26 percent last year, and half of all students fail to graduate public high school. Needless to say, that is a lot of young men with nothing to do.
Many of these young layabouts find it unnecessary to work, save on those rare occasions when they need to make a fast buck. Unlike the middle-class suburbs or working class neighborhoods, it takes very few resources to get by in the ghetto. “You would be amazed at the number of persons you can cram into a small non-air-conditioned rental unit,” a social worker friend tells me. Their expenses amount to little more than the clothes on their backs, bus tickets, cell phones and cigarettes. This easily can be earned by strolling down to the Temporary Labor Agency and putting in an honest day’s work chopping ice or stacking brick, which leaves one free for the rest of the week. Others make a few bucks peddling dope or stealing pipe (a spray-painted sign on a nearby boarded-up building informs would-be thieves that they have already removed all the copper). A few ask for handouts. Many collect Supplemental Security Insurance for real or imagined disabilities.
Even if these aimless youth wanted to work, numerous factors militate against it. Foremost is the lack of good-paying, low-skill manufacturing jobs, the type of work that makes getting off the stoop worthwhile. Today’s big cities are overwhelmingly centers for the financial, legal, and medical service industries. Not exactly prime job hunting territory for young men with zero job skills. True, there are plenty of McJobs for girls, and roofing and lawncare jobs, though employers understandably prefer to hire reliable, undemanding, and hard-working migrant workers.
Child support payments are another popular excuse to avoid work. Many do-nothings are fathers — which means they can do at least one thing well — and see little profit in roasting 40-hours a week on a tar roof only to see their wages go to child support. (Responsibility to their offspring comes in a distant third or fourth.) Others will work until the Bureaucracy catches up with them and begins garnishing their wages.
Moreover, a good percentage of these stoop jockeys are all but unemployable, either because they cannot pass a simple drug test or because of extensive prison records. A surprising number have outstanding warrants; it is hard to keep a job when you are constantly being locked up for this or that drug or traffic offense.
THE OTHER HALF OF the story is that such aimlessness and lack of purpose has become a major cause of the social disorder plaguing our inner-cities. “Work,” said Voltaire, “spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.” But work has other positive effects beyond promoting healthy, livable cities. Work is an important cog in the socializing process, as it teaches one to get along with men and women of diverse ages, races, and social classes. Workers learn to take orders from people they would ordinarily want to punch in the mouth. Workers learn to control their temper and to modify their behavior and their language. Work instills discipline, self-sufficiency, and self-respect (as opposed to self-esteem). Work builds character. Without meaningful work we see that corruption of character the communitarian essayist Wendell Berry pegged as the source of the “corruption of community.” What is more, men who work to support a family enjoy the dignity and satisfaction of doing one’s duty and living for others. You may even feel like you are contributing to society, and that you are part of a larger community, though this may be stretching it.
It is all of a piece. A thriving, livable city is one filled with responsible working men. An urban hellhole, conversely, is littered with aimless do-nothings. Our politicians can gab all they want about creating jobs, but in our cities that is putting the cart before the horse. First we have to do what their fathers should have done: teach our aimless youth the value of hard work. In other words, we have to start from scratch.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (114) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 5.17.12 @ 6:33AM
There is no proof that "Work is an important cog in the socializing process, as it teaches one to get along with men and women of diverse ages, races, and social classes."
Whenever I observe that diversity plug I can hear fingernails screeching across a blackboard.
There is no evidence that having diversity in the workplace is a good thing other than the fact it's another federal requirement.
On the contrary, for the last two years more jobs have been created overseas by American corporations who fear lawsuits.
If those federal laws were eliminated or mitigated somewhat many more jobs would be created within our borders.
Until that happens we will have millions more unemployed and white collar jobs disappearing at an alarming rate.
Smart A. | 5.17.12 @ 7:19AM
Eventually the govt. is going to have to force these people to work and get married before they have children. That's the problem with welfare...you give people all these benefits and then what do they do with their time? You have to revive the CCC, put them in uniforms, clean up the cities,
work a 40-hour week....No more "baby daddies",
try being a husband and father.
Jack in Wi.| 5.17.12 @ 7:22AM
Both my grandfathers were apprenticed to tradesmen at the age of 12, back in the old countries, they came from. One was a baker and one a carpenter. With that knowledge and experience they supported their families well, frugally, for their whole lives. They are way way too many people in school. The number of kids in college building up huge debts for their parents or themseves is obscene. They should be out working and learning about life on the job. Education is a life long experience. We need a way for people to cheaply keep their education's going their whole lives, with their own ambition, and resources, We need people to take responsibility for their own lives.
Occam's Tool| 5.17.12 @ 11:37AM
"educations," no apostrophe. No comma between "old countries" and "they." "One was a baker and one WAS a carpenter"---parallelism. "There are way too many..." "ambition and resources; we"
You think with the same clarity that you write with, Jack.
Public policy needs to be set up to harness men's sexual drives into building a family and taking care of children. I have no problems with college education being available for those who want it. I resent it being used to winnow out people for jobs; education of that type should be used to prepare one for scholarship or prepare one for the data driven workforce.
The winnowing SHOULD be done at the high school level, as it was in my day. Our high schools are a disgrace. In my public high school, every teacher I had in academic subjects had a master's degree at minimum in the field they taught. One of my English teachers was a PhD from Northwestern, and another one finished his PhD at NIU while I was there. It is possible to get an excellent quality education at the High School level; I received triple 5s on my 3 AP courses that I took in 1980.
Liberals are responsible for destroying the Black Family. Next up: Gay Marriage.
Jeamar| 5.17.12 @ 12:03PM
You can replace my daughter as the "grammar Nazi." People posting are likely thinking faster than their are typing and since they aren't writing a paper for publication, we should be able to overlook most errors not related to one's "thinking" ability. Congratulations on your triple 5s on your 3 AP courses twenty+ years ago. Well done--as usual!
Jeamar| 5.17.12 @ 12:05PM
OOOOps! ...Than their... should be "than they are"---OMG poor proof reading on my part. Going too fast.
Dave Williams| 5.17.12 @ 12:48PM
It's typically the people who can't use grammar correctly who use the term "grammar Nazi," which every thinking person should mentally replace with "careful writer." Besides, Wacky Jacky, I'd be mighty careful about using "nazi" in any context, since your repeated anti-semitic posts have shown YOU to be the nazi.
Jeamar| 5.17.12 @ 12:55PM
Dave: I don't know to whom you refer as Wacky Jacky, not I. If you think I have ever posted even one anti-semitic post, please give me an example.
Sorry if the word "nazi" offends you. It is very difficult nowadays not to offend someone with something. Think how words have changed context in the last 50--60 yrs. Gay meaning "merry" can no longer be used. Negroes have gone, in my lifetime, from _____, colored, to black. Orientals are now Asians. Handicapped persons are special need. I am not making a case here than any of these changes are good or bad.
Jack in Wi.| 5.17.12 @ 1:21PM
The only Nazi here is the Zio Nazi Occam. He is a always calling for genocide and nuclear attack, against millions of innocent Muslims and Christians and other Middle East people. He claims to be a Psychiatrist. I think he is a psychotic who gets a hold of the computer in the mental ward dayroom.
Ike| 5.17.12 @ 2:45PM
"Public policy needs to be set up..."; the only public policy which is going to create the conditions necesarry and sufficient to get these young men up and out working is to have no public policy. That is the lesson of the last 40-plus years of public policies which were intended to direct, structure, encourage, instruct or harness the people of our nation. Without welfare of all sorts - and no I'm not getting into a discussion of social security, et al - people of all races, ethnicities and ages would act in ways that would give them some assurance of having enough to live on and at that same time not bankrupt the entire nation. How do I know that? I know that because I have read the history of the U.S. from about 1620 - about 1960 and that lesson, if no other, is plain to be seen. The more federal, state and local politicians try to "help", the more damage is done to people and to society as a whole.
billy| 5.21.12 @ 11:03AM
Yours may be the worst case of misplaced noblesse oblige I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Thank goodness you are far too busy correcting people's grammar to have time to actually do anything to implement the beliefs you express.
bsg| 5.22.12 @ 1:06PM
Wow Occaim, you be da bomb,; noen you englash so good. mabe you be a prof. and not work either?
Sheila| 5.17.12 @ 1:12PM
Well said, Jack. (I was an English major, but I'm not going to parse your words or correct your grammar; nor will I brag about my AP scores or grades - I'll leave that for super Jew Occam's Tool). Ignore the standard brickbats from the standard "respectable conservatives" that, unfortunately, comprise the majority of TAS's readership. Not everyone is college material, and there is an inherent dignity and value in any sort of work, as you well understand.
Jack in Wi.| 5.17.12 @ 1:29PM
Sheila: Nobody is ever going to call me a good typist or speller. I only took up writing, on the internet, because I couldn't take the lies and BS. the zionists put out every day. I did graduate from college in history many years ago. I also got accepted in a couple law schools and graduate schools. I ended up as a business man for many years. I have have always been a voracious reader with a terrific memeory for history and current events. I also was involved with many bureaucrats and politicians in my business life. It gives me a lot of opinions that are not liked by the usual suspects here.
Mac Jehoff| 5.17.12 @ 8:41PM
Hey Leiderkranz for brains, I am just an old working stiff with callused appendages at the ends of my arms and I figured out how to use a keyboard to communicate here. You brag about your past achievements, but I suggest it is all your big fantasy. Anybody who ran a business as you claim to have done would be more adept at spelling and grammar than what Mr. Tool has criticised you for on this particular blog. Your use of first person pronouns is exceeded by one man, our soon to be ex-president of the USA : B. Hussein Obama. Go soak your head in Baraboo, baron fromage.
Bob K.| 5.17.12 @ 8:25AM
The biggest mistake was letting women into this diversity mix. They realized that they don't need men after all! They can jump to the head of the line along with real minorities in jobs, promotions, and college scholarships. The federal and state regulations are their big daddies now!
The only men these women are really attached to now are the ones they give birth t0. That is if they can find a satisfactory (to them) man who will father the one, or possibly two children they would like to have.
It has become more difficult for them to find men now; men who will marry them and who will try to be real fathers under these circumstances where the traditional bread winners role has been taken from them.
This attitude has gone metastatic in the Black Community. The women there long ago took the federal and state bureaucracies as their lawful wedded husbands.
KyMouse| 5.17.12 @ 9:37AM
I don't disagree with your overall point, however:
There are many women who "need men" and would like very much to be married; but on this planet, men still do almost all of the proposing.
I know women who are passed over for one reason or another, and they have to join the workforce or go on welfare. The same is true of many widows whose husbands don't leave them well-off.
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 10:10AM
KyMouse, you're absolutely right. When I was single and dating, I knew a lot of women who could have used a man like me (decent job, reliable, not terribly bad looking, treats people well) and they weren't getting any younger.
Yet, they were products of a culture that taught them to act as if they didn't need men. Men "still do almost all of the proposing" because that's the way these women were taught to do it so that they could win The Game or they simply didn't think about it. But when I didn't NEED these women, I didn't have to put up with such games anymore. Since there was a shortage of guys like me and a plethora of women like them, I could afford to be picky. Sadly, these women rather than learning the lesson that maybe they should "work" a little harder at relationships (note the correlation between the term and the topic of this article), they instead doubled down and became even more withdrawn and passive-aggressive.
Actually, some women did learn. Apparently, middle and upper class women's marriage rates have stopped sliding and they have started to use internet dating and even dating down (a little). So the successful plumbers that had previously married working class women now are poached by women who work as accountants. They're skimming that cream. So a whole system that helped the poor to rise out of poverty (working class men becoming successful and bringing the women up with them) has largely been exploited to the hilt. For now.
Ironically, working class women now often either "hook up" with the wrong guys or they play 19th century waiting games that are also doomed to failure. I came from the working class so I know and when I reached my 30's, and success, I didn't see any reason or need to bother with either such women.
KyMouse| 5.17.12 @ 2:04PM
Very true, PolishKnight.
It's just that whenever I hear someone say, "Women should go get married," I can pretty much guarantee that it's a man talking. There are a whole lot of gals who never get marriage proposals. A whole lot of pots that our culture requires to wait until their lids pop the Question.
Or is it lids waiting for their pots?
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 2:34PM
I met my wife while I was living in Poland and had corresponded with her over email (she lived in Ukraine at the time) so I took a train to see her. It turns out that I didn't realize I needed a VISA at the time and they "deported" me (kicked me out) and I slept in the train station in Eastern Poland, got a VISA, then went back later that afternoon.
While we squabbled a lot over various things (she was angry I didn't offer to take her coat) but we could at least discuss them and spent our time emailing and telephoning each other for a year. I visited her for Christmas and she sat down with me and the first thing out of her mouth was. "Are you planning to marry me or not?"
So I just got out the box with a ring and said here you go and that was it. That was the "proposal". It more or less has been our communication style for the 8 years since.
I really don't dig passive-aggressive games or damsels waiting in distress especially since many of them like to have modern attitudes about a lot of other things. Playing hard to get implies to me that they don't value relationships very much and will have a divorce lawyer on speed dial. A lot of women like to say they want men, not boys, but also adult women, even teenage women, should be capable of articulating their feelings, desires, and expectations and accepting responsibility for them. It's not rocket science.
KyMouse| 5.17.12 @ 3:24PM
There are lots of homely (or ugly) women who would love to marry, but whose chances diminish with each passing year. Women are held to a higher standard than men when it comes to appearance, and there are always younger women coming over the horizon.
If the man has more money than the woman, she will probably be viewed as a gold-digger if she proposes to him.
My circle of acquaintances, friends and relatives doesn't contain any women who did the asking, as far as I know. I'm glad it happened for you and your lady.
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 3:55PM
KyMouse, I'm not the greatest looking guy in the world. Many women told me they wouldn't want to date a man shorter than 5'10". Since a majority of men are shorter than that, it would appear that women are at least as fussy about looks as men are. Adding on traditional 1950's breadwinner requirements and waiting games, it's no wonder that women, aging or no, living by those rules finds it "hard" to, er, "find" a decent man.
Regarding women worried about being viewed as gold diggers. You know the old joke about haggling over price? If a woman is showing off an expensive diamond engagement ring to her friends, which is a symbol of 2 months salary according to the ads, trying to avoid being viewed as a golddigger is kind of late, don't you think? Does it really matter by then? For the record, when I'm with my wife some people might wonder if I have such a hot wife because I met her overseas. IMO, it's a small price to pay.
My circle of acquaintances, at my age, include about half of them who are divorced, chronically single, or have remarried a few times. My two sisters and I all had Elvis weddings (But I think mine was the best) so traditionalism in that manner wasn't that important to us. Simply having a heterosexual relationship and successful marriage is really what's important nowadays. My father in law was shocked about the Elvis wedding but the Elvis did a really great job. Pity there was no champagne in the limo though...
Appleby| 5.17.12 @ 7:41PM
Women don't "need" men the way tapeworms do; women enjoy the company of men and, if the right one comes along, our lives are made better by the companionship we foster with one specific man. You guys who lament the days when women "needed" men are longing for the days when you didn't have to exert yourself to get a full time cook and housekeeper who would sleep over. These days you have to actually have something to offer, and ain't that a boo-hoo shame.But I digress.
As the Chinese are going to find out very soon (and probably the West Indians too), a large roving mob of unattached men quickly turns into an army, either on your behalf or their own. Somebody had better find something for these stoop jockeys to do, or they'll do what barbarians have always done.
Bob K.| 5.17.12 @ 8:20PM
When that military horde of chinese males storms our beaches out west we can comfort ourselves in the knowledge that many of our commanding officers defending the country will be diversity female graduates of our military academies.
Who said women have a civilizing effect on men?
They will lead the useless progressive liberal men in defending against that barbarian horde of womenless men! What a future!
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 9:45AM
I think what Chris meant by "diversity" was in the truest sense: people who are from different backgrounds than you, religions, and regions and outside of your "clique". Work is basically someone, anyone off the street walking up with money and asking you to do something for them even if you have nothing otherwise in common with them.
Vern Crisler| 5.17.12 @ 2:34PM
Simple solution: restore vagrancy laws. Those laws scared me when I was a kid, and I feared growing up and becoming a bum. So I didn't.
The solutions are easy; the political will to implement them is hard.
Brubaker| 5.17.12 @ 9:35PM
"Whenever I observe that diversity plug I can hear fingernails screeching across a blackboard."
It's not a plug for diversity, moron; it's a plug for working to support oneself. And yes, there's abundant proof that working does improve socialization -- as well as self-respect.
Von Mises Jr| 5.17.12 @ 7:06AM
This is the story of socialism. William Badford of Plymouth Plantation could not get the people to work for two reasons. The General Store distributed food based on need, so that those who were not industrious complained of illness or injury to avoid work. And the industrious refused to work for other people's wives and children.
In traveling to Quebec, I heard of the same problem with socialized medicine. Those that did not want to work tied up the Emergency Room at hospitals and clinics. They spent 8-16 hours waiting to complain about pain or sickness to get a sick note to get off work for several days or the week. Those that were sick used WebMD to avoid going to the hospital to wait 8-16 hours.
TLP| 5.17.12 @ 9:36AM
Who will teach the Urban Youth how to work?
That's easy.
The Prison Official in charge of the Road Crew they're on, or the Liscence Plate making machine they're operating.
Von Mises Jr| 5.17.12 @ 10:06AM
If they throw all the liberal politicians in prison for their crimes, the Urban Youth will have girlfriends to also teach them sensitivity.
Appleby| 5.17.12 @ 7:22AM
Very well written and very true. The real problem for the "stoop jockeys" (great term!) is that they never meet anybody different from themselves, unless that person is at the other end of their gun; therefore, they have no idea how the larger world works. It's quite the same for many modern mothers -- they are incapable of imagining a world where someone is not screaming, kicking, fighting and dragging at their skirts and they bitterly resent the people not so encumbered who expect them to take some kind of control of the situation. (Being brought up by a Southern Lady, I can quell the average preschool brat with eye contact and the firmly spoken word "HUSH." Mothers stand amazed!) Two of us sisters have travelled widely and lived in many different parts of the country; we have a much better view of reality than the ones who have never met anybody different from themselves.
Finally, my Daddy and six of his 9 brothers (everyone old enough) were lifted into the wider world by World War II, which took them out of their Wisconsin Farm culture and dropped them into a world filled with every kind and colour and shape and religion and showed them a world, even under gunfire and terror, that was filled with a whole different kind of opporunity. Today's "stoop jockeys" couldn't make it in any kind of modern warfare save perhaps as a Somali Pirate. And when there isn't even a berth for you as cannon fodder, well, what are we going to do with them all? It's an interesting proposition, isn't it?
All American American| 5.17.12 @ 7:28AM
Trying to tell you all, its in their nature. Don't believe me? Go visit Africa---I spent some time there while I was in the military. The only time those people moved with any sense of urgency or purpose was when they heard the Khat Plane coming in for a landing.
Well that's not entirely true---some of the younger ones spent all day playing soccer in the square. Going to school or finding a job just isn't, well, fun. Plus dat be wut da white man want you to do, yo! We needs to keeps it real yo!
Betina| 5.17.12 @ 7:41AM
Nice to see the old hard unvarnished truth written with such clarity. Our "inner cities" resemble the third world hellholes of the residents' ancestors. Could it be there is a correlation? We "need" to educate "youth"? Really? The only time education will be meaningful for that segment of the population is when the hand outs dry up. And that will never happen because the phrase "long hot summer" will be resurrected. How may billions have been stolen and lavished on this demographic with mixed results, most of them not worth the sums stolen? This country is going broke trying to fix the unfixable. Truth be told.
Sheila| 5.17.12 @ 1:16PM
Well said, Betina. You're too honest for most of this crowd of "respectable" conservatives. Remember, the truth be rayciss.
DWSWesVirginny| 5.17.12 @ 9:22AM
If by "their" you mean African Americans, then I think you should look at the rural parts of the country where you will see white young men with similar behavior. One should never underestimate the willingness of human beings--regardless of race, creed, tribe, ethnic origin, left-handed, right-handed, handicapped and tediously on and on--to be corrupted through welfare, and other types of hand outs that come masked as "easy living."
Alej| 5.17.12 @ 10:50AM
Kids in my part of South Texas don't fit your W. Virginia mold... they have two jobs after school or on weekends, take their caps or hats off when they meet my wife, and end up working their way through Vo-Tech or academic schools.
By "their," that person, and the author of the article, did indeed mean African Americans.
Dave Williams| 5.17.12 @ 12:51PM
Theodore Dalrymple has got it right: it's not race, it's culture. Whenever people get accustomed to getting something for nothing, their character declines...mostly irreversibly, but rarely, not.
This country is doomed.
Sheila| 5.17.12 @ 1:22PM
Culture proceeds from race, not the other way around. Culture is the combined ethos of a people. Had America been colonized and settled by Chinese, there would be quite a different culture extant here. That lower-class Whites have taken to aping standard black behavior is a separate and more complex issue, but Dalrymple is incorrect - it's race.
Seek| 5.17.12 @ 1:50PM
You're right. It's race. As in "blacks." I love that term, "urban youth," by the way -- as if the semi-literate, crime-prone layabouts were Poles, Italians or Scots.
Derek Leaberry| 5.17.12 @ 2:54PM
Very wise post and lost on 90 % of Americans and half of all those who label themselves "conservative."
Appleby| 5.17.12 @ 7:46PM
Great Britain, one of the whitest places on Earth once upon a time, is descending rapidly into brute-squad drunken hopeless anger. There are actually downtown places in London where they park drunken teeangers and twenty-somethings scooped up off the street, into wheel chairs and onto gurneys, to keep them out of the emergency rooms and off the sidewalks while they sleep off their binge. And these kids are whiter than Ivory Snow. It's not the race. It's the hopeless culture of socialism that gives you everything but a purpose in life.
All American American| 5.17.12 @ 8:45PM
Sheila that angers me to no end---Whites emulating aspects of the black, ahem, "culture" via dress, mannerisms, or even through mimicking the ignorant ebonics dialect.
When the dominant culture of a society starts to mimic the inferior culture, you know the society won't last much longer.
The Big E| 5.17.12 @ 1:24PM
Hmmmm. I didn't know the Greeks were black, but apparently they must be, since their entire male populace seems to fit your description right now.
Saying it's a matter of race is a cop-out. If you give anyone something for nothing long enough, they will act exactly like the people you describe, regardless of race, religion, etc.
The truth is not "it's in their nature," the truth is, "it's in their politics."
Cobalt| 5.17.12 @ 2:57PM
Forty-eight women raped every hour in Congo, study finds
http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/.....pe=article
Mr ED| 5.17.12 @ 7:36AM
Here's a nifty idea; Lets inculcate the lazy, indolent and unsatisfied with the idea that their situation is actually the fault (no detailed explaination are needed, trust me) of the successful around them and that those successful have somehow "stolen" the rightful share of success from the lazy, indolent and unsatisfied.
We will, through our control of the media, portray the lazy and indolent as corageous and rightous victims who - through no fault of their own - have had their rightful share of success expropriated from them by unseen, invidious forces. We will also use music, TV and movies to reinforce these same false ideas to the public at-large.
Hmm. Now I'm not sure if I'm talking about the Leftist Army of Aggrieved Dependents in the USA or Greece. Oh well, doesn't matter as long as the result is Leftists who know best in all things gain more power to meddle in everyones lives and remake the world to operate in whatever way makes us feel best about ourselves. Gawd aren't we Leftists marvelous creatures!
Shiori| 5.17.12 @ 9:59AM
Exactly. It's not DNA. It's Leftism. All welfare states produce a non-productive, leech culture. Men need a purpose, a mission - the welfare state nullifies that purpose. It also steals a woman's virtue. Strong values once held the black community together - it's how they survived an endless onslaught of racism. When opportunity knocked, they excelled because they had strong family ties and solid moral principles. Now, that's called 'selling out', thanks to the unrelenting battery of left wing propaganda. Even preachers now fail to get through - some are themselves, 'baby-daddies' to many. The Democrat Party is still killing blacks, only now they veil their racism in a cloak of egalitarianism. It's enough to make ya cry.
Stan Redmond| 5.17.12 @ 10:06AM
I snickered at your post and found this part especially funny..."and that those successful have somehow "stolen" the rightful share of success from the lazy, indolent and unsatisfied."
Funny because it's true, and funnier because they never had anything to steal in the first place.
How is it so many living in absolute self created government funded squaller can complain about some evyil "millionaire and billionaire" or "the man" holding them down when everything in life is provided for them. All they have to do is come out and take the ACORN van to the polling station and vote democrat every couple years.
Mr ED| 5.17.12 @ 5:33PM
"Funny because it's true, and funnier because they never had anything to steal in the first place."
Ah, but that is the very core of the Libs rationale for seizing power by any means necessary. The premise is that everyone has a "right" to equality, and for the Libs and their Army or Aggrieved Dependents that equality means equality of condition. For decades the Libs whined about the poverty rate, but once that poverty rate became too small in numbers for the Libs to drone on about they cooked up the "inequality" meme. Just think about it - There will never be "equality" in the sense that everyone is absolutely equal, so the Libs have invented a permanent rationale to insert themselves into all of our lives, all in the interest of "fairness" and its new fair-haired step child "inequality".
There is nothing about Liberal doctrine that is sane, coherrent or cogent, but to them that is a plus because they only care about power over others and their rationale for assuming that power by any means necessary.
kwan| 5.17.12 @ 7:43AM
For decades now the Democrat/Communist Party has been cultivating a Gub-a-Mint cheese addicted underclass for the sole purpose of gaining political power. As a result the producer/workers are being taxed to fund an ever expanding voting block that will give the Democrat/Communist Party the political power to fundamentally transform the United States into a Totalitarian Socialist State.
Mark MacInnis| 5.17.12 @ 8:13AM
Bring back the draft.
Stan Redmond| 5.17.12 @ 10:07AM
Would you REALLY want these people defending the country?
Cloudbuster | 5.17.12 @ 10:36AM
I remain firmly opposed to this, because my son is a skilled, career volunteer soldier, and I don't want him to have to rely on these lazy, shiftless porch monkeys to watch his back.
richard ryan| 5.17.12 @ 12:48PM
Then those who do not volunteer for service to their country are drafted into a special military branch and trained separately. Old School Marine Bootcamp sort of stuff. There they will remain until satisfactory results are obtained. Then they join the ranks of the elite military. People are surprised what they are capable of when truly "motivated." Sure there will be those who just do not make it. They can be trained for non-military duties if they have given a good effort and failed. Cost= less than SS/disability payments we are giving them now, and they will provide productive service.
NJ Mike| 5.17.12 @ 8:17AM
Mr. O'Stalin,
The author was not referring to the PC mantra of diversity, he was using the word correctly; a diverse range of ages, sexes etc..... and it is true, that work does teach one to NOT slap some sense into your suprevisor.
Trust me, I work for the Goobermint and keeping food on my kid's plate keeps me from many many rash actions............
Dr. X| 5.17.12 @ 8:27AM
This is really a great article. Orlet is 100% correct. However, I'm not sure that this country is ready or able to implement the real solution: a cultural counterrevolution that undoes virtually all the destructive behaviors from the 1960s and the Great Society.
We'd have to crack down on drugs, crack down on the sexual promiscuity, cut the welfare, the EBT and the Section 8, and draft these people into the military to give them skills, discipline, and patriotism. In sum we'd have to return this country to 1955 and that ain't about to happen.
I might also add the politically-incorrect observation that the negative behaviors Orlet describes are highly correlated with persons of color. Previous generations of white Americans expected that blacks would behave this way and shunned them accordingly. Maybe they were on to something. While segregation did produce many unfair outcomes for individual blacks who actually were better than ghetto trash, it's not evident to me that the absence of segregation has done much to improve the lives of large numbers of urban blacks whose problems are part and parcel of an inferior microculture that is subsidized by the taxpayer dollars of industrious and productive people.
Aquanomics| 5.17.12 @ 11:35AM
Load them on a boat, then send them all home across the water to the (red/black/green) land of their ancestors.
The initial crime wave started by the now defunded dependent classes would be small now that 41 states allow concealed carry.
To heck with them all.
Petronius| 5.17.12 @ 12:19PM
I have recommended banishment before. Add the liberals to the the manifest. And, (wait one...hello. Yeah, right). Where was I? Sorry, A, you did put "red" first. Maybe we can be neighbors in OK. They just passed Open Carry.
Seek| 5.17.12 @ 1:54PM
Actually, President Lincoln during 1862-63 had been working out the rudiments of a plan to do just that. Can anyone say, given the hindsight of what we've experienced since, that repatriation would have been a bad idea?
Dmac | 5.17.12 @ 5:21PM
Can anyone name one country run by blacks that is succesful? Not even Liberia which was founded by free blacks succeded. In black culture women run things, not the men. Think about that and it explains a whole lot of the problem.
If you have ten fingers, ten toes, can walk and have a 6th grade reading level or better and you are under 55, you should not be allowed to be on welfare. At the same time we should deport every illegal we can get our hands on so we can open up some of the low skill jobs for our citizens. If you need welfare and you are not handicapped and are under age 55 then you should look for it from your family or church first.
The saddest fact about welfare is that now young whites see it as a way of life. Why wouldn't they? They've watched blacks get away with it for 40 years. Even when black work they still lie and collect checks from the government. Ever been in that welfare office, it's the fox guarding the hen house and if you are white and applying for help good luck. Seen it myself when my girlfriend was trying to get aid for her 18 yr old son who was dieing from cancer. She would get denied for some obscure reason or another, but the black lady with a $500.00 weave and $200.00 nails could get an emergency check on the spot.
All of it needs to end and we need to start over. Unless you are old or truly handicapped or ill, no check for you! Take your lazy ass to work!
ninainMA| 5.17.12 @ 8:30AM
In defense of the black community, this is not just the blacks who have learned how to take advantage of the system. And that's what they have learned, advantage...they have learned to find an MD who will write a script for back pain or depression, oh look I can't work cuz the doc says I can't...or I can take these pain meds cuz I got a script...um, not sure but I think mandatory drug tests for anyone collecting welfare would put a stop to some of that...along with a time limit for the welfare....or kid limit...too many without working you don't get welfare....any way you look at it, the system is broke and us hardworking slobs pay for it one way or the other. It's a cycle that repeats itself...
THKrupp| 5.17.12 @ 9:39AM
In addition to your comment and as someone pointed out earlier this isnt exclusive to black people. In my part of the country all the people that I see sitting on porches doing nothing all day are white. This is a problem that cuts across all boundries.
Stan Redmond| 5.17.12 @ 10:08AM
Poverty is a mindset.
Dr. X| 5.17.12 @ 12:27PM
Yes, I agree that the problem is not EXCLUSIVE to blacks -- but as I wrote previously it IS "highly correlated."
Unfortunately what we've done in the last 60 years is that we've achieved racial equality by lowering the standards of whites instead of raising the standards of blacks.
Historian| 5.17.12 @ 8:30AM
First bread and circuses,then circuses without bread. Then Grachi without gnochi,then Diocletian"s "reforms" followed by feudalism and barbarians. The rise of The Church, and Chivalry began to tame the barbarians leading to the renaissance and then enlightenment. Two modles emerge "limited lockean government and total government.
Napolean or Washington that's still the question.
Powerski| 5.17.12 @ 8:45AM
Why not a WPA-style program? If St Louis is anything like Springfield MA, the infrastructure is in deplorable condition. Put them to work breaking up and replacing all the sidewalks - by pick and shovel if necessary.
AllantheK| 5.17.12 @ 9:21AM
Would be a start if the food was tied to their productivity. NO productivity, No food. The more you work the more you get. At least, we can get something for all the money that is being taken from us. When they figure out that getting a job, getting paid and having more than just food, they may indeed move on and we can have less of our money taken. Continue till all that is left is charity's. NO more social programs at the government teat.
Melvin| 5.17.12 @ 9:14AM
I remember our children seething with anger because we made our three kids work. The two boys took care of the yard, and our daughter did the light work. She tried pushing the lawnmower, but didn't have enough rear-end to push it.
The kids did their own laundry, cleaned their bathroom, and vacuumed and cleaned the common areas.
They took out the trash, washed the cars. We taught them how to cook and for reasons worthy of a college study, the boys turned out to be terrific cooks. I thoroughly enjoy our oldest son's cooking at Thanksgiving.
We didn't have cable until all three of them left home to go out on their own. We had one single computer in the living room we're the wife and I could keep an eye on what the kids were doing.
One time when the my youngest son forgot to put the trash cart for pickup. I made him push that cart all the way down the street where we live and back again. He seethed with anger because his friends were laughing at him. At the time I didn't give a rats ass about self-esteem. But after that, he never forgot to take out the trash again, and that was until he left home.
My wife and I never won any awards for being the cool parent, but we can say our kids can survive in any situation that comes before them.The can cook, clean, fix balky lawn mowers, and change the brakes on their vehicles, they can handle emergencies, they don't panic when a natural disaster befalls them.
My oldest hasn't been in the military but he has a bug out bag ready in case a hurricane hits, or a snowstorm in where he and his family have to evacuate quickly.
Bottom line what made this all work is. Our three children know who their married mother and father is, and the know where we live.
All of our children are still married with no hint of divorce when things get tough. They're raising their children with strong Conservative values with a strong work ethic, and anything they embark on they do so with conviction.
Our children do not look towards government as a everlasting cornucopia of free stuff. They rely on themselves and their good common sense.
Is Melvin tooting his horn as well as his family's" Yes I suppose I am, because I as well as others who post her at AP know full well that is what it takes to make a society survive. Like many women today in where I constantly hear, "There are no real men out there, to have a meaningful long term relationship. All I can say to that is, "Well girls, you reap what you sow."
Sheila| 5.17.12 @ 1:26PM
Best comment of the whole thread, Melvin. Well done. Bless you and your family.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.17.12 @ 4:47PM
Melvin;
Good work. I have tried to teach many of the same lessons to my children. One of the pitfalls is, though, that the family members who don't have to fix the appliances or replace them when broken seem to most frequently be the ones who break them. They are now learning to do many things manually.
Mark| 5.17.12 @ 9:16AM
I live in St. Louis City. Have for 35 years. One party (democrat) controlled. No alderman is accountable (except to fellow democrat federal auditors) for the money wasted, money that never really goes toward solving the causes of problems, just to cronies for this or that project. That's just the usual annual cash grants from the Feds. Plus, Stimulus is hired NOBODY! You can't expect responsible hard working folks to put up with this City for very long. And when they grow older, and get smarter, and figure out what's really going on with the single-party political process here, they leave! When it's my time, I will too, and never look back at this democrat-party controlled hell hole! I can say it, because I've lived it for 35 years!
Peppermint Tea| 5.17.12 @ 9:22AM
Under the USSR's thumb, Poland had a drinking problem with over half the male population on a bender at any given time. When the USSR and Polish Communism collapsed, a western factory was built and they solved the alcoholism problem of workers by installing a breathilizer at the gate. A worker got one chance to fail and was sent home. The second time, they were fired. With the safety net gone, alcoholism was no longer a problem.
kurt2022| 5.17.12 @ 9:23AM
As long as "uncle sugar daddy" is there to coddle them with all they need to survive free of charge nothing will change! We need a two pronged approach to end this, 1) complete dismantling of the welfare state even if the work shy have to live under a bridges, 2) a complete stoppage of outsoucing of jobs to third world slave labor nations that only drive the wages of the people that are willing to work into the gutter while making these outsourcing corporations and there "so called" masters rich off the backs of slaves! We have to be able to provide jobs for the people to go from welfare to work in which we currently don't have!
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 9:56AM
Sadly, simply letting former welfare recipients live under bridges is not an instant solution. That's already the case in many third world countries and they aren't getting out of it.
As the author points out, having a large family into poverty, even without welfare, is surprisingly affordable. You don't need a lot of money to put feed 8 starving mouths in a one bedroom apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. The kids can go to work or commit crime, at minimum wages, and get by just long enough to have 8 kids of their own and so on. Do the math.
The problem is that the culture that supported the European lifestyle was dependent upon a work and family ethic with the father as the RESPECTED head of household. He was expected, and respected, for being the primary (if not necessarily sole) provider for a family that did better than his father's and moved himself and his family and society forward.
Then feminism and the notion of "women's empowerment" came along. This was the notion that a woman's life should be "fun" and based upon what makes her "happy." Even if we eliminate all the other man-hating and child exploiting features of feminism, the problem remains that if women simply can do as they please with no judgment from society, then they set a standard for everyone else to lower themselves down to.
So why should a man pay his "child" support and die young from hard work for a society that continually treats him with contempt? In that particular case, they have a point. Why bother? Why should men and children bother with living their lives, and political thinking, other than "what's in it for ME right now?" That's the gold standard set even by Republican elites who think it's ok to import millions of immigrants and stick the hidden costs of such cheap labor on the taxpayer and society. Rather than even Marxism we now basically have New York/Italian style mafia crony capitalism with businesses treating labor and the public with contempt.
That's the whole problem and it's a big one, isn't it? It's hard to know even where to start to clean it all up.
kurt2022| 5.17.12 @ 10:17AM
Totally agree with your comment, we have an uneducated(look what passes for an education in most colleges today) younger population that could never compete with the mechanical skills people from other nations have(other than Europe) and no motivation what so ever to obtain those skills! We are basically screwed no matter what we do to try and change this!
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 10:38AM
With respect to the younger population, many of them do want to go to engineering colleges but as others pointed out here, H1B's come in from the third world with dubious degrees and then say they can build the space shuttle again for $40 an hour. They then turn around and demand the native workers "train" them how to do it and then when the project fails, go back to their countries with the money and start their own "university" out of their basement to educate their kids to repeat the process. It works great for them.
Even Europe pushes out millions of bureaucrats competing for civil service jobs. That's precisely what the new socialist French PM promised to deliver: More government jobs without even thinking about how to pay for them (since only private sector jobs "pay" for themselves).
In a way, capitalism has conceded to socialism either by willingly paying taxes for government workers to regulate it to death, or joining the ranks of socialists to get sweetheart deals to put their competitors out of business and undermine their credibility, OR by simply treating their workers badly and making them regard "socialism" (government work) as superior.
Ouchsourced| 5.17.12 @ 10:05AM
Kurt,
You make a great point often ignored. We usually hear about the illegal "stealing" jobs that the stoop dwellers could do. Not really, illegals will work 100 times harder and not come back to rob the place.
But back on point, outsourcing. We seem to always discuss the lower classes being hurt by unemployment, but ignore the technical fields that have been gutted by outsourcing.
I have over 30 years in the computer field. Every time this country celebrates success buy shooting itself in the financial head, the first people fired are tens of thousands of IT consultants.
Very often these "vacancies" are then filled with Indian labor. People willing to work for 50% or less what the American worker was paid. Corporations love it. They think they're saving lots of money and never seem to care that the quality of the work is garbage. They just push that issue down the financal calendar in order to reap the short term profit.
After two layoffs in 10 years, I find myself working for less that I earned in 1995. After a year searching for work, the only position is an Indian dominated company.
These people celebrate when one of them gets an H1-B visa like it's Christmas. And it is. They come here, bring the family, and often live rent free and getting paid 4-5 times what they made at home. All the while they are using their tax-free, expenses-paid income to buy homes in India.
At the same time, their American co-workers (and you can count us on one hand) struggle to make our way.
I've started to call them visa slaves, because the company expects them to work 24/7, or they are shipped back to India. Conversely, the American staff is forced to do the same.
The result is and American IT industry that is a shadow of former times. I'm an executive manager and I've seen hourly rates for highly skilled IT positions drop 100 - 200% because of these migrants.
No wonder we can't convince American students to study computer science. They face a job wasteland when they graduate and compete with Babu with three masters degrees from Unpronounceable University will to work for $40/hr.
The visa program needs to be shot in the head before more industries fall to this virus. And if anyone doubts this, consider the fact that banks are now sending financial analysis work and lae offices are sending research work to India to cut costs.
I've had people ask me "my son wants to get into computers, any advice"? I tell them that the kid needs to get a job building military systems that require a citizenship and a security clearance...no H1-B competition there.
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 10:20AM
"I tell them that the kid needs to get a job building military systems that require a citizenship and a security clearance...no H1-B competition there."
Most of these third worlders will become citizens and able to get such clearance by then and keep in mind that these are government jobs with racial preferences. If the white male dominated IT industry fell, why shouldn't military contracting?
Third world labor not only works longer hours and puts out bad quality work to the customer, but lie to management as well and then try to pin the blame on some other co-worker. That's SOP in their home countries. One of them even told me so by saying "That's human nature". It is, in their universe.
I disagree with your claim "Not really, illegals will work 100 times harder and not come back to rob the place." I remember living in an condo complex in California and the only "outsiders" we would see were the illegal landscapers who were continually running leaf blowers (because the association can't stand to see an errant leaf!) My bicycle was stolen and the lock cut. I can't prove they did it, but there's a joke in California that you should be cautious not to hit an illegal riding a bike with your car because it might be your bike. They may not rob their employer directly, but they'll case the joint for someone else or rob someone else's place. Plus studies have shown most of them are on some kind of welfare benefit.
bagittagit| 5.17.12 @ 12:59PM
To re-enforce your points, one would expect to see excellent economic growth numbers coming from areas harboring all these 'hard working illegals'. Not only don't you see that, you don't see it coming from the illegals country of origin either.
Stan Redmond| 5.17.12 @ 10:11AM
In otherwords a government program (forcing companies to move labor to the USA) to solve a government created problem. Do we need a government program to force those people to fill the mind numbing jobs the Chinese are doing too?
Stop thinking that the government is the answer. It's not. REMOVE the government burdens to business to make it attractive to have jobs here.
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 10:30AM
This is a classic "free market" Romney/Libertarian style argument. It's probably also a classic tea-partier argument. Sadly, it's obsolete.
I disagree with the left about nearly all things, but they have a point (even if they are insincere and excessive about it) that we need things such as environmental regulations. It's not just the "job" the Chinese do but how they do it. They just dump the PCB's into the water and poison their factory workers because the factory owners have a brother-in-law in government who looks the other way. It's the ideal "business-government" relationship we had here in the states in the 1800's and helped to springboard the ideology of socialism. GE has a staff of lawyers and lobbyists so they are basically subsidized by the government.
You know what? To hell with them. They don't care about us and if these marxist third world hoards they're outsourcing and immigrating to make a quick buck turn around and demand these oligarchs', and their childrens' heads, on a silver platter I won't get in their way.
My wife watches Ukrainian news about the former Ukrainian PM Julia Tymoshenko rotting in prison and my wife said she doesn't mind sending the woman's daughter to join her there for selling Sevastopol over to the Russians in exchange for a gas contract where they pay twice as much as we do here in the states. She made millions from those kinds of deals after the former USSR collapsed.
FYI, the "government program" to bring back jobs to these shores are simple: Stop the H1B's and giving away USA citizenship like candy, enforce e-verify, and fine every employer who has illegals on the payroll $10,000 per citation with half that bounty going to any whistleblower who drops a dime and the OTHER half of the money to fund the salaries of the justice and police departments. They don't nail illegals, they don't get paid that week. That should help motivate 'em.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 9:59AM
The problem won't solve unless we deport all those 20 million amigos. It's the "immigration stupid"!
Stan Redmond| 5.17.12 @ 10:13AM
Don't worry Bill,
The Obama economy is driving the "amigos" to the greener pastures of Mexico.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 11:56AM
Redmond,
Those kyotes will come back when the economy surges. We need to focus on "self-deportation", enforce the e-varify and the current immigration law. Would be nice, if we can close the border for 6 months, and that will save America for being invaded by another 2 million amigos.
henry calvin| 5.17.12 @ 10:22AM
Now that is a thoughtful comment! Let's get rid of the only workforce that is willing to do agriculture jobs and suddenly everyone will rush to the fields to bring in the harvest!! lol, when the grocery shelves are empty and the crops are rotting in my fields come and see me and I'll have a job for you!!P.S. I have a mile and a half of fence to build on the ranch. I could use some workers, but you have to pass a drug test and be willing to use a post pounder and string barbed wire. and takers???....crickets...............
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 11:10AM
Gee, didn't Reagan grant amnesty to millions of illegals in the 80's who were willing to do those jobs? Whatever happened to THEM?!?!
So basically, the reason why the illegals are "willing" to do the jobs is because they aren't legally entitled to better work (in other words, slaves.) Hmm, sounds like a way HR used to fill agricultural jobs in another era...
No doubt the work is tough and hard, but I'd be willing to pay more for a head of lettuce harvested legally by better paid workers than by illegals whom I need to pay twice as much in taxes via the welfare state.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 11:59AM
SIR,
ILLEGALS ARE ILLEGALS. America is a nation of law and order.
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 12:59PM
Bill, America was founded upon a revolutionary republic. That doesn't mean it's an anarchist country (in fact, that's what mainstream European monarchists were claiming) but rather that law and order aren't necessarily worshiped. The underground railroad ferried slaves to freedom. Prohibition was overturned because millions of people disobeyed it. On both the left and right, there's a proud history of disobeying unfair laws in this country.
That said, I don't think the immigration laws are unfair. A country has a right to patrol it's borders and cannot allow all the world's poor to immigrate especially when a welfare state has been established. Illegals are invaders, plain and simple.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 1:05PM
PolishKnight,
Right.
So, we need to enforce the immigration laws, and that will create an environment for jobs and economy when Americans will get those jobs, once stolen by those illegal amigos, and that they help rebuild America, without the help of those illegal amigos.
Hispanics contributed to America: poverty, crime, and AIDS. Period!
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 2:40PM
I want to avoid the emphasis on law and order (and racism) because they could be red-herrings. I simply want to focus on the right of a nation and people to control their borders and resources.
Present it this way: You can invite people to your home and treat them well, but you reserve the right to choose whom to invite and allow in. When someone breaks into your home and helps themselves to your fridge, they're a burglar. Plain and simple. Even a beggar at least has the courtesy to knock on the front door.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 11:58AM
Calvin,
Those 20 million uneducated illegal amigos contribute nothing to the American economy, besides stealing our jobs, abusing our welfare system, and banckrupting America to the ground. If those amigos are deported, then Americans will get those jobs. NICE!
Seek| 5.17.12 @ 1:58PM
If employers offered better wages and benefits, more native-born Americans would materialize. I guarantee it. There is no such thing as "jobs Americans won't do," so long as the compensation is right. Had we only applied this dictum during the 17th and 18th century instead of importing black slave laborers from West Africa to do jobs that lazy Southern plantation owners wouldn't do!
Controse| 5.17.12 @ 10:18AM
Question : "Who will teach our urban youth the value of hard work?"
Answer : Better question : "What will teach our urban youth the value of hard work?"
Answer to better question : Starvation.
Stan Redmond| 5.17.12 @ 10:25AM
Just a confession. If I knew everything would be provided to me I wouldn't work.
I'm self employed with a small, but expanding, manufacturing company. I work minimum 10 hours a day 6 sometimes 7 days a week. It's a lot of work (luckily a lot of fun). I would guess 25% - 50% of my time goes to complying with some regulation or some stupid gov't paper pusher requirement or keeping track of tax garbage. (Much easier with my shop overseas where the gov't and my emplyees are actually happy to have me there).
Weigh the options. 70 hours a week working my butt off for meager pay when I'm lucky only to have some scum bag like Obama spew his bile at me or sit on my ass watching TV all day waiting for my check.
I have a rental house filled with a multi generational welfare family. 6 kids to a 25 year old mother with grandma and the latest "uncle" who moving in and out. No one works in the entire family. And why would they? I get rent checks directly from the county, the electricity, gas, and water is all directly paid to the utility company, and they get as much food as they can possibly eat all courtesy of the tax payers. They don't even have to go through the trouble of sending out a utility check once a month.
I wonder how many welfare lay abouts watch TV and fantasize living the lifestyle of a trust fund baby when they are doing the same thing?
bryan| 5.17.12 @ 11:13AM
This is an extremely valid point that doesn't get enough attention but is causing the unraveling of our social fabric. Being unemployable coupled with not wanting to work creates a society of worthless do nothing people that is unamerican to the core. Education may be the key but these don't even have a work habit which needs to come before education. I like to see the enablement of laziness stopped and a work boot camp employed to instill something that was neglected in their youth.
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 12:25PM
The fundamental problem with this suggestion, Bryan, like many other valid suggestions here is that it relies upon government which has totally fallen to the left.
I'm going to be flying to Poland via Austria and was considering visiting the site of Hitler's beer hall putsch. There's an interesting parallel in history and a conversation I had with a Marxist Jew on a plane flight. She was explaining that socialism was good because it's was lawful, democratic, and run by elites. I commented that Hitler, after his failed putsch, won via dirty but nonetheless legal politics that a modern leftist would be proud of. She was offended and said she didn't want to talk to me anymore. Apparently, she didn't like the fact that someone else was using her methods...
I remember reading a long time ago the putsch failed because the revolution failed to do anything to support it: The radio station was still controlled by the state as well as the police. It was simply a matter of a phone call to shut them down.
An ideology such as the Tea Party or libertarianism or "free market economies" that relies largely upon prayer and waiting for things to work out is rather handicapped in accomplishing its goals especially when the opposition has captured most of the state, the courts, the populace via immigration and political payoffs, the mainstream media, and even the police via unionization. I'm sure I missed a few things but that should be enough, shouldn't it? Oh, wait, I missed much of corporate America that buys into "diversity", cheap marxist-voting labor via immigration, and government tax breaks and subsidies,
The only people scheduled to be put into concentration camps to learn the value of a good hard day's work is, well, us in order to pay for all the slackers that vote Democrat (at least as long as they continue to bother with the pretense of a Democratic electoral system.) This worked for a while under Stalin until he began to run out of such labor (they kept dying) but with the third world to tap, that may not be a problem for them for a while but then again they are running out of resources to squander.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 1:05PM
America has a problem: IMMIGRATION!
PolishKnight| 5.17.12 @ 2:44PM
Not all immigrants are bad. My wife is a legal immigrant who came here due to marriage to me. She is beautiful, educated, hard working, and more conservative than I am. Which is part of the problem because American women get really, really jealous around her.
So feminists passed IMBRA which basically treats American men marrying foreign women as potential criminals but it's quite obvious that the feminists were reacting to the gripes of their aging career women sitting at home alone that men were basically going out and getting Hondas when rusting Pintos were sitting on the lot.
Cobalt| 5.17.12 @ 4:55PM
American feminists feel threatened by women who are immigrants, and these feminists know they will never be able to control the minds of immigrant women.
In reference to the Ford Pinto and feminists, perhaps we should add the AMC Gremlin to the list.
Tom of the Missouri| 5.19.12 @ 1:04PM
PolishKnight, Please tell me how to find one of these polish wives who is beautiful, hard working and more conservative than me.. I am recently divorced and tired of Liberal American women or even conservative ones. They live in a world that is separated from reality and especially the coming reality and I can't take it anymore.
Slacker| 5.17.12 @ 11:47AM
I have to yield on point to the inner-city black men. I wouldn’t marry to those ghetto bitches either.
Too many are obese and/or bad-tempered. Truth be told, most are not all that feminine looking after 25. They yell and scream and generally treat their men like shit.
They might catch and keep a good man if they took care of themselves and behaved more ladylike.
The Big E| 5.17.12 @ 11:53AM
2 Thessalonians 3:6 - 15 addressed the situation perfectly I think.
6 In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching[a] you received from us.
7 For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you,
8 nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.
9 We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.
10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
11 We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies.
12 Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.
13 And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.
14 Take special note of anyone who does not obey our instruction in this letter. Do not associate with them, in order that they may feel ashamed.
15 Yet do not regard them as an enemy, but warn them as you would a fellow believer.
Charity to those in genuine need is a Christian virtue. Charity to the lazy is not.
ncatty| 5.17.12 @ 11:58AM
What we need are more "programs."
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 12:02PM
O Amigos!
IRS report that America is losing $40 billion/year because those illegal amigos are abusing the "childcare tax credit" and sending money to Latin America, while those amigos pay NO taxes.
Dimitry Aleksandrovich| 5.17.12 @ 12:31PM
Hunter's Point (San Francisco), East Oakland, The Iron Triangle (Richmond) are some of the worst neighborhoods in America. What do all three have in common. They are all predominantly black, they were all on the frontlines of the de-industrialization of America and saw many factories, steel mills, shipyards, etc. close when Wall Street types figured out they could make more money sending those jobs overseas. Thirdly all three of these neighborhoods went through the collapse of the black family unit where church played a central role and families stuck together. Now these neighborhoods have extremely high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and children born outside of marriage who will never have a solid male role model in their lives.
Bill| 5.17.12 @ 1:23PM
worst case: 20 million illegal AMIGOS.
LeoInTheWoods| 5.17.12 @ 1:18PM
These guys should chant, "We don't need a job. We'll vote to keep Obama and move back in with Momma."
Perfect campaign motto for the left...
Jim| 5.17.12 @ 7:38PM
Now, in regards to the child support comment, I'm sure there are men who don't see that responsibility, but the vast majority of us have no problem paying a FAIR amount. 50% or more of our wages is anything but that. Most people don't know, but we pay the taxes on that amount, it's free money to the mom.
Also, many items of income on the mom's side don't "count," meaning we pay on every dime we get, they don't. Many items are excluded from their income. Plus, the biggest kicker is that men are only "allowed" their children every other weekend and maybe two weeks a year, at the most 20% of the time, when we used to see them 100% of the time, and that isn't our choice. That also plays into the calculation, taking money from men and unjustly giving it to women.
Please don't think child support is for the child, far too many women don't need it, they only take it to hurt the man they claim to not care about.
Sorry, you touched a nerve there.
cicero| 5.17.12 @ 8:54PM
About 15 years ago, here in Michigan, they cut out general relief for able bodied young men. The hew and cry was that there would be starvation in the streets. Of course, no such thing happened. The young men just figured out how to get the young women to support them.
The only way to stop it is just to stop it. One child born out of wedlock is a mistake. 6-15 children born out of wedlock is an industry. You show me the social problem, and I will show the government program that causes or sustains it.
If the programs that sustain idleness are shut down, the people will adjust. They will do what they have to do to live, even if that means working.
PeteHDO| 5.17.12 @ 10:30PM
So enjoy computer commandos and pontificating intelectuals. Guess what folks its to late. The Great Society found your neighborhood.
POST American| 5.17.12 @ 10:59PM
EVen by '90's Show' standards, this
isn't even a sideshow.
What America's now going through is what
Britain went through, by degrees, after
WW2 --when Marshall aid was made contingent
on Britain de-industrializing, trashing its
culture ---and merging with the continent
---as dreamed up long before by the CFR--RIIA
Globalist capstone creeps.
Meanwhile 2012, the head of the serpent
remains, indisputably, the PRIVATE,
foreign owned, USURY driven, EUGENICS
and Globalism driving 'FED'.
"The Federal Reserve Board has pumped
so many BILLIONS into [--NAZI--} Germany
that they DARE NOT name the TOTAL."
-Rep. Charles H. McFadden
(1935)
SOUND FAMILIAR?
As we take in the catastrophic, and soon
to be cataclysmic, affects of the RED China
handover and western cultural takedown op,
can there by ay doubt --any doubt at all that--
---HUAC is NOW ----NUREMBERG 2012!?!
-------------------------------TIME TO MOVE BOYS!
dadfly| 5.18.12 @ 2:23AM
thanks for more common sense. trumps untold thousands of social "scientists," wasted tax-payer money on government grants, and blizzards of lying white papers.
cowgirl| 5.18.12 @ 10:55AM
And what are these unemployeable youths who barely scrape by on a day to day basis missing:
A FATHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
jgo| 5.18.12 @ 2:35PM
We got this same story during the Shrub admin... while the lawyers were writing articles and giving seminars in how to place ads and otherwise handle recruiting so as not to find able and willing US applicants, and to find pretexts on which to reject even those who are able and willing to do the work.
quoting from Cohen and Grigsby's seminar which they proudly posted on YouTube: "we are not going to try to find a place [at which to advertise the job] where the applicants are going to be the most numerous. We're going to try to find a place where, again, we're complying with the law, and hoping, and likely, not to find qualified and interested worker applicants. So that's the process that we will go through with you from the beginning onward..."
"Um, those are ways we can disqualify them and get them out of the market... If it gets to the point where they're, somebody's looking like they're very qualified, we ask them to have the manager of that specific position step in and go over the qualifications with them. If necessary schedule an interview, go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them for this particular position. In most cases that doesn't seem to be a problem... you can eliminate them..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200706.html#Best2007
And back in 2000 April in Immigration Daily, Joel Stewart told us: "even in a depressed economy, employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply."