Prometheus 6

Let us be clear. Karl Zinmeister is a problem. That said, this

"What the Moynihan report identified as a minority virus soon became a mass outbreak," Zinsmeister said. "Today, white families spin apart at rates higher than blacks exhibited at the time [Moynihan] wrote."

...was, to me, a surprising admission. It's something I've noted for quite a while.

IT'S BECAUSE OF HIP HOP! THE BLING BLIIIIINDS!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Anyway, the same forces that have worked Black folks have been working white folks all along. They've just inherited specific legal and cultural supports that mitigated their impact.

But those forces fuel our economy.

There is inertia in human activity that is very much like the inertia in physical activity. Things tend to continue doing what they are doing until something stops them. There is friction and drag, which means maintenance requires constant material input. A constantly increasing growth rate (our official goal) means consumption will increase even more rapidly than growth.

What all that means in this case is the nature of our economic outputs would eventually overwhelm the most protected of citizens. And for the likes o' Zinmeister to admit white America is 'acting Black' means the problem is too big to hide anymore.

Now. Let's see if they dog the majority or if they seek solutions beyond personal responsibility. Any bets?

White House Aide Channels a Democrat on Fixing Nation's Social Ills
By Michael A. Fletcher
Monday, October 1, 2007; A17

The poverty rate in America hovers at just above 12 percent, but for African Americans the figure is closer to 25 percent. Large percentages of black students drop out of high school. And by the time they reach their mid-30s, 60 percent of black men who had dropped out have spent time in prison.

Through the years, those problems have moved policymakers to bolster public education, transfer income to the poor and create new incentives for work. But while these efforts are laudable and may even make some difference, they are ultimately futile when it comes to altering the larger dynamic of this nation's social problems, says Karl Zinsmeister, President Bush's chief domestic policy adviser.

At a Harvard University conference Friday aimed at wrestling with the uncomfortable issues of race and family raised more than four decades ago by the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (N.Y.), Zinsmeister essentially agreed with Moynihan, his former boss. Zinsmeister said many of the nation's most intractable social problems are rooted in the breakdown of the American family, a trend Moynihan was lambasted for spotlighting in the mid-1960s.

Zinsmeister, who made clear that his remarks represented his views and not necessarily those of the administration, said Moynihan was prescient. "If a young American were placed behind a curtain, and you were required to guess his or her social status and individual happiness with only one factual datum before you, the single more trenchant indicator you could ask for would be whether that person grew up with both parents in attendance," Zinsmeister said. "Unfortunately, about a third of our next generation will substantially grow up without this advantage, and fully half will have at least a brief brush with family separation before they turn 18."

Moynihan's 1965 report focused on African Americans, concluding that unstable black families threaten the fabric of black society. Now, Zinsmeister said, those maladies extend far beyond black families.

"What the Moynihan report identified as a minority virus soon became a mass outbreak," Zinsmeister said. "Today, white families spin apart at rates higher than blacks exhibited at the time [Moynihan] wrote."

Zinsmeister, before coming to the White House, was editor in chief of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine, where he developed a reputation for having sharp and often unconventional views on issues including racial profiling (it's logical) and uncommitted sex (it has ruined entire cities).

He noted that people across the ideological spectrum are increasingly recognizing the importance of family.