Doing Good vs. Feeling Good

Dead tortoise (not) walking.

That tortoise is dead, dude, and it probably died slowly, painfully and in terror. Drowning is no joke. The (apparently) young man who thought he was rescuing a confused, wayward turtle, obviously felt really good about himself until someone informed him that the testudo he tossed in the water can't swim. Tortoises are exclusively terrestrial. They sink like rocks.

The photo above is a perfect metaphor of "liberal" "thought". As Denis Prager explains below, "liberals" don't care what actions or policies accomplish good things in the real world, they only care about what actions or policies make them feel good about themselves.



Mr. Prager provides two very good examples in his video, the minimum wage and pacifism. But there may be an even better example: the welfare state. The American welfare system purports to help the poor, but instead creates perverse incentives that lock people into poverty for generations, and the people most negatively affected are poor blacks, the very people "liberals" claim to help most.

The results of welfare policies discouraging marriage and family were dramatic, as out-of-wedlock birthrates skyrocketed among all demographic groups in the U.S., but most notably African Americans. In the mid-1960s, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was scarcely 3% for whites, 7.7% for Americans overall, and 24.5% among blacks. By 1976, those figures had risen to nearly 10% for whites, 24.7% for Americans as a whole, and 50.3% for blacks specifically. And today, the numbers stand at 29% for whites, 41% for the nation overall, and 73% for blacks. In other words, the entire country is moving rapidly in the wrong direction, but blacks in particular have reached a point of veritable catastrophe.  

The devastating societal consequences of family breakdown cannot be overstated. Father-absent families—black and white alike—generally occupy the bottom rung of America's economic ladder. Regardless of race or ethnicity, the poverty rate for single parents with children is several times higher than the corresponding rate for married couples with children. According to Robert Rector, senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, “the absence of marriage increases the frequency of child poverty 700 percent” and thus constitutes the single most reliable predictor of a self-perpetuating underclass. Articulating a similar theme many years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people to pull themselves out of poverty.”  

Children in single-parent households are burdened not only with economic, but also profound social and psychological, disadvantages. For example, youngsters raised by single parents, as compared to those who grow up in intact married homes, are more likely to be physically abused; to display emotional disorders; to smoke, drink, and use drugs; to perform poorly in school; to be suspended or expelled from school; to drop out of high school; to behave aggressively and violently; to be arrested for a juvenile crime; to serve jail time before age 30; and to go on to experience poverty as adults. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 60% of rapists, 72% of adolescent murderers, and 70% of long-term prison inmates are men who grew up in fatherless homes. With regard to girls in particular, those raised by single mothers are more than twice as likely to give birth out-of-wedlock, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty for yet another generation.

Obviously, "liberals" can't blame their pet policies for this catastrophe. After all, their hearts - and therefore their intentions - are pure, unlike those mean, heartless conservatives. "Liberals" therefore invent all kinds of excuses, like racism and "white privilege", as though 21st century America could possibly be more racist than Jim Crow America.

Kathryn Edin writes:

After several years of interviewing, observing, and living among these fathers, I’ve learned that not caring about their children is not the problem. Our 2013 book, Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City, reveals that these men desperately want to be good fathers, and they are often quite intensively involved in the early years of their children’s lives. Yet they usually fail to stay closely connected as their kids grow older.
...
If they want to stop the father-go-round, moms will have to do what they can to keep the biological dad involved with his child and not push him aside. It’s up to them, because currently, mothers have most of the power de facto, if not de jure. Almost always, an unmarried mother has presumed custody, even if the dad willingly signs documents to establish legal paternity.
...
So here is my message to the single moms I’ve come to know and admire over the years, the ones who do so much of the nurturing and caring—those who often struggle mightily just to keep a roof over their kids’ heads: You can’t easily substitute someone else for your kid’s dad.

Unfortunately, Ms. Edin doesn't make the connection that custody law is not the only factor that gives  mothers the power, and that fathers aren't just being replaced by other men, but by government itself. As Daniel Mitchell points out, depending on her state of residence, a single mother might need to make $69,000/year before getting off welfare makes economic sense.

That also means that the father needs to make $69,000/year before marrying him and getting off welfare makes economic sense. The probability that a young man who grew up poor in the inner city can clear that bar is minuscule. That means that governments give mothers incentives to kick fathers out of the home rather than marrying them, even if both together can make that much. From the Front Page Magazine article quoted above:

The marriage penalties that are embedded in welfare programs can be particularly severe if a woman on public assistance weds a man who is employed in a low-paying job. As a FamilyScholars.org report puts it: “When a couple's income nears the limits prescribed by Medicaid, a few extra dollars in income cause thousands of dollars in benefits to be lost. What all of this means is that the two most important routes out of poverty—marriage and work—are heavily taxed under the current U.S. system.” 

William Galston, who served in the '90s as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, estimated that the welfare system, with its economic disincentives to marriage, was responsible for at least 15% to 20% of the family disintegration in the United States. Libertarian scholar Charles Murray has placed the figure at somewhere around 50%. By Murray's reckoning, the growth and increased liberalization of the “welfare complex” have eroded the traditional ethos of working-class communities that once held people who worked at low-wage jobs, and men who married the mothers of their children, in much higher esteem than unwed parents who became wards of the state.

People tend to respond predictably to incentives. Obviously, these perverse incentives affect everyone who partakes of the welfare state, not just blacks, but blacks are most likely to partake, and are therefore most negatively affected.



Note that blacks make up 15.1% of the under-18 population, but 30.5% of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) recipients, which makes them the demographic most likely to use welfare. Hispanics are next, followed by whites, followed by Asians. Note that, as noted above, blacks are most likely to grow up in fatherless homes, followed by Hispanics, then whites, then Asians. That's a strong correlation, and although it's true that correlation does not necessarily prove causation, when strong correlation exists alongside strong financial incentives, causation becomes rather obvious.

As Walter E. Williams stated:

The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family.

I've presented this evidence to my "liberal" friends and they simply don't care. It doesn't matter to them that in reality the welfare state they support has destroyed the most vulnerable American families, causing untold, unnecessary misery. It doesn't matter to them that the murder rate in Chicago and Baltimore, the incarceration rate of young black men, the poverty rate, unemployment rate and rate of drug use among blacks can all be traced back to fatherless homes, which can be traced back to the welfare state. It's not about race. The same is true for poor Hispanics in the migrant farmer communities where I grew up and poor whites in Appalachia.

None of that matters. Like the ignoramus who tossed the non-swimming, terrestrial tortoise in the water without so much as a Google search on his smart phone, facts don't matter to "liberals". All that matters to them is the feeling of righteousness they derive from supporting policies that Democrat politicians insist are compassionate. But there's nothing compassionate about perpetuating generational cycles of dependency, poverty and criminality.

It's not just economically stupid. It's immoral. It's unconscionable. It's an atrocity. It's downright evil.


Further reading:

Get a preview at Amazon.

Perpetuating Stereotypes (Feminist Edition)

Feminist Julie Bindel claims that "marriage can never be feminist". On that much we agree. You can watch and listen to her arguments below.

I get the feeling that Ms. Bindel's video will backfire more often than not. Why? Because Ms. Bindle perpetuates stereotypes about feminists. Compare Ms. Bindle to the women she mocks in her video.

Enlightened feminist Julie Bindel

Poor misguided sap #1

Poor misguided sap #2

Poor misguided sap #3

When selling something, the salesperson matters. That's especially true if you're selling something intangible, like an idea. A product can sell itself if it's good enough. An idea can't. The salesperson needs to embody that which he/she is selling. Ms. Bindel is selling feminism as a means to freedom, and ultimately happiness, yet she she comes off as dour, bitter and generally unpleasant. The impression one gets from the video is that of a woman whose choices have made her miserable, and would love some equally miserable company.

If I didn't know better I'd wonder if Ms. Bindel's video was a parody made by her ideological opponents. But I do know better, because I've been exposed to feminists. Stereotypes about feminists exist for a reason. Behold exhibit A (language warning).



Behold exhibit B.

When selling something, the salesperson matters. That's especially true if you're selling something intangible, like an idea.

I could do this all day, but there's only so much I can take. All these feminists are perfect examples of why "liberals" want conservatives to shut up, while conservatives want "liberals" to keep talking. In fact, when exhibit B went viral, a fellow feminist penned an angry (what else?) email that "provided a list of demands that included a request that [student journalist Kassy] Dillon be prohibited from writing or publishing for Campus Reform or any Mount Holyoke-affiliated student publication".

In other words, a student journalist provided a feminist with a soapbox from which to broadcast her message, and feminists are so embarrassed by their peer and her message that they want to punish the journalist. 

I can't say that I blame them. 

This brings us back to Ms. Bindel's video. She's a terrible salesperson for feminism, not because she gives a false impression of feminism and its adherents, but because she gives an accurate impression of them.  Feminism does, in fact, make women miserable, and miserable company. A 2009 paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (clearly a bastion of conservative thought) put it this way: 

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative wellbeing is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries.

It's not a paradox. There is no paradox. There is an obvious correlation between increased acceptance of feminist though throughout industrialized countries and increased female misery. Looking at and listening to the women who've most wholeheartedly embraced feminism, no one should be surprised. This is why - like most conservatives - I want feminists to be seen and heard as much as possible. Because I suspect that when most young women are exposed to their misery and hysteria, their reactions will resemble that of this young woman. 




What about the substance of Ms. Bindel's arguments? I'll let Steven Crowder handle that. 




UPDATE (30 May 2016): The Guardian tackles the question of why women are more miserable than ever "despite" feminist "progress", comes tantalizingly close to the answer, and still misses the mark. 

The social history of Switzerland, where women weren’t allowed to vote until 1971, reveals the subtleties of employment expectations on happiness. A decade after Swiss women gained suffrage, the country’s citizens voted in a referendum on whether the constitution should be amended to state that women deserve equal pay for equal work. 

Different parts of Switzerland voted very differently. Unsurprisingly, cantons (Swiss states) with a high proportion of votes in favor of the amendment were recorded as having a small gender wage gap some years later. But strangely, working women in areas with strong traditional values – where most people had voted against equal pay – were happier than working women in liberal cantons. 

Right. "Strangely". No correlation to see here, folks. Move along.