Saturday, October 6, 2012

Ann Coulter to the Rescue of Walter Block

In preparation for my upcoming interview of Ann Coulter, I'm currently reading her new book, Mugged.

In the book she makes a reference to the marriage rates of whites and blacks after the Civil War. It's pretty much the same point Walter Block made on RT that caused such a brouhaha in certain circles. But this being a book and not live television, Coulter provides much more detail and a reference:
Erol Ricketts, a demographer and sociologist with the Rockefeller Foundation, found that between 1890 and 1950, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites, according to the U.S. Census. [Erol Ricketts, "The Origin of Black Female-Headed Families," Focus Spring/Summer 1989, 32-37]
This is exactly the fact that Block was attempting to state. Namely, that there isn't some inherent tendency for blacks not to form families, and that they did form families as regularly as whites (or in greater numbers) after the Civil War and that this only changed when government policies created incentives for back women to remain unmarried.

It was all about LBJ's crazed Great Society program. Coulter continues:
Everyone knew---even FDR's secreatray of labor, Frances Perkins, knew--that granting widows' benefits to unmarried women with illegitimate children would have disastrous consequences... 
But under LBJ, that's exactly the system liberals implemented. The "suitable home" requirements---such as having a husband--were jettisoned as irrational and racist by liberal know-it-alls in the Federal Bureau of Public Assistance. By 1960, only 8 percent of welfare benefits intended for widows or wives with disabled husbands were being collected by such. More than 60 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments went to "absent father" homes. As a result, illegitimacy, particularly among blacks, went through the roof. That was the year the black marriage rate began its precipitous decline, gradually at first, with the marriage rate for black women falling below 70 percent for the first time only in 1970...By 2010, only 30.1 percent of blacks above the age of 15 were married, compared to 52.7 percent of whites...To hide their own role in the suppression of a black middle class, liberals promoted the myth that slavery alone had produced dystopian black lives, This is the quasi-theological underpinning of the modern welfare state.

Note to the dense, who may not get it, Coulter is not promoting slavery here, or saying slavery was the good-times for blacks, she is simply saying that after slavery blacks married at very high rates until LBJ's Great Society programs and that it is LBJ's programs that have contributed massively to the fatherless black homes.

9 comments:

  1. It's good that you provided the "note to the dense" because man, there are so many useless oxygen thieves out there who can't think beyond what their 4th grade teacher taught them. Useless idiots and maggots to the core.

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  2. It has long been destroying white families too. White couples are far less willing to work out childish disagreements, if they are even married in the first place. Government is to blame, but men and women are equally guilty for believing in all this crap. These idiots may have 500+ "friends" on Facebook, but they have almost no idea how to be a real human being of substance.

    Truth is what they make of it. They don't believe there are any fixed truths except how to adapt as situations change. No principles. Just opportunists. I often wonder about the collapse, what it will bring, and if it will bring any exceptional change in behavior and beliefs of the people.

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  3. I had this very same conversation in at a local coin shop.

    I entered the shop and some gentlemen was discussing how he was gathering a group of individuals to visit LBJ's grave and pee all over it. I asked him why he would bother to do that and he began discussing the 'Great Society' programs. He then threw out this little gem that prior to LBJ's 'Great Society', black people had less bastardization than the white population. LBJ changed all of that. Go, go government incentives.

    When will people realize that government is not the answer to all of our problems?

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  4. Interesting, in that I just finished reading Ch. 14 "The Economics Of The Great Society" in the book "Delusions of Power" by Robert Higgs. Sounds like Ann Coulter is simply presenting her view on an outcome she believes to be caused by policies that came forth (and have been added to since) said period.
    A takeaway from Higg's book is you had both idealists and experimenters pressing for Great Society programs, you had politicians and those able to financially exploit as well, who I would assert the growth in government ultimately benefits. No "Great Society" has happened, instead we have a command-control exploited welfare state fostering a "Lousy Society."

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  5. I wanna hate Coulter (the Fox thing), but she just keeps being right (no pun).
    Her defense of Joe McCarthy was heroic a few years back(ask Tom Woods).
    It's just a god-darn shame what the Gummint has done to us.

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    1. I agree. The fox thing and her Romney-worship drive me crazy, but her writing is very enjoyable. Her weekly article is good and I've read a couple of her books, and she meticulously cites sources to back up what she says and she's really funny. I also appreciate the fact that she doesn't back down to the Whoopi Goldberg's of the world. I'm definitely looking forward to Wenzel's interview.

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  6. Bob, you do realize Walter Block is anti-IP and takes the Kinsellian/Hoppean position? Not sure why you treat Jeffrey Tucker so badly but free pass Walter Block on the same topic.

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    1. You are way off base. Wenzel goes for truth and doesn't give anybody a free pass and will note truth where ever he sees it.

      This is Wenzel praising Tucker's book:

      http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/06/bourbon-for-breakfast-living-outside.html

      Listen to the first segment of Wenzel's interview with Block, where he takes Block to task for supporting Rand Paul's endorsement of Romney:

      http://epj.me/MsxzF1

      Which caused Block to admit that Wenzel had changed his view on the position:

      http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/07/making-impact-with-walter-block.html

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