Perhaps we could begin with the obviously correlating data suggesting that with welfare policies’ expansion has come the dissolution of family formations, leading to a cultural epidemic of fatherlessness which particularly afflicts the black community. Or perhaps we can note that the perpetual raising of minimum wage has run in tandem with the perpetual increase in unemployment among young blacks, effectively pricing young urban workers out of the labor market.
George Orwell once made this statement: “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
A wise observation describing bleak circumstances, sure, but I don’t think it quite captures the depths to which we’ve sunk as of 2014. Because we have, in fact, now sunk to a depth at which intelligent men are apparently required to self-flagellate to atone for doing nothing more than restating the obvious.
Paul Ryan, who would be recognized in any reasonable appraisal as an intelligent man, said this in an appearance in March on MSNBC’s “NewsNation”:
“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and culture of work. There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”
Naturally, the left went nuts over the quote. Just one example among the attacks against Ryan comes from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who called the observation a “thinly veiled racial attack” and suggested that “inner city” and “culture” are code language employed to denigrate black people.
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