In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us… I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, — your interference is doing him positive injury.
January 26, 1865-Frederick Douglass
The sociologist Ann Wortham was interviewed by Bill Moyers for some PBS special ca. 1988. PBS doesn’t promote the work of independent thinkers anymore, so likely would never interview her today. She offered her own memoir on the protest politics of the era (ca. 1961) and her thoughts on where political action in the black population had gone wrong. Among her observations: (1) she was from Tennessee, where social relations across the color bar were ‘very complex’; she could empathize with blacks from Alabama, but she could not feel their anger because she hadn’t grown up in that regime. (2) Martin Luther King at that time seemed to be promoting the idea that black people would redeem white people, an idea she had at the time found anxiety-provoking, not inspiring. (3) Her father was rather put out that the efforts of his generation had gone unrecognized; she noted her father had put multiple children through school with what little assistance was available prior to 1965. (4) She also noted that for her father and other Southern blacks, white people were ‘the guv’mint’ and you did not trust ‘the guv’mint’. It was her regret that the viewpoint of northern blacks on government action had crowded out this other perspectives.
The problem with Reagan’s aphorism is that there is such a thing as a public good, and if the government isn’t producing the good, the good just isn’t produced. And, of course, every segment of the community is very badly in need of vigorous police protection, and no segment moreso than the slum population. Vigorous law enforcement is what the Democratic Party is now committed to wrecking.
Akin to vigorous law enforcement is school discipline, which of course has been wrecked by lawyers in a double-act with the issue of our odious schools of education. And akin to that would be fixed performance standards in the classroom and sorting students according to their performance, so that instruction can occur at a pace optimal for a given sort of student. The issue of our schools of education wrecked that too.
One thing I totally agreed with Jonah Goldberg on. As he said, “libertarians almost never make this mistake, conservatives rarely do, and liberals almost always do.”
Only his phrasing is that the Government CANNOT love you.
Though if it could, you’d swiftly regret it.
Nate, the sentiment Reagan utters is local to problems which appeared during the period running from 1929-74. As a rule, government officials better be there to help. If they aren’t, why did you hire them?
My daddy knew this lawyer from Santa Fé named Fred Standley. Mr. Standley was a storyteller and one of his more amusing concerned the comical results of putting HUD financed public housing on local Indian reservations (in accordance with Navajo funerary customs, the multi-family dwellings in question were torched when someone died in one). The thing is, provision of rental housing is outside the ken of conventional government functions and, except in odd circumstances (military bases, emergency shelters) quite unnecessary. The practice is omnipresent in occidental welfare states, many of whom have wrecked the market for private rental housing by imposing rent controls. Reagan cut his teeth in electoral politics during the Great Society era, which was the occasion of scads of ill-thought-out social work project. Cops we need. Social workers we do not.
@Art – I was replying to the post title. Not sure what you’re on about with Reagan nor how your reply is relevant to my previous comment.
Though I like your final sentence. What about… “We should have priests, not social workers.”
?
“We should have priests, not social workers.”
Unfortunately, the clergy in all denominations is chock-a-block with people who want to be den mothers on salary.
One thing the government can do is maintain price stability through prudent monetary policy. You notice we’re back to Carter-era inflation rates. Absolutely amazing that every ugly element of the 1970s has reappeared in the last 18 months and Biden voters just pretend it isn’t happening.
Art,
I apologize in advance.
Confessional: I’m not a fan (understatement of the century) of The Fed. I think not only the USA but the entire World would be better off if the Fed never existed.
And, I’m so old I remember June 1981 when the Fed Fund rate hit 19.99%. Two words: Paul Volcker.
To your point from a recent Deutsche Bank study and commentary:
“The authors warned that ‘neglecting inflation leaves global economies sitting on a time bomb.’ They noted similarities between the 1970s and today.”
Stephen Green (on Instapundit, not an economist, I think), “I had been assured by all the very best people that flooding the economy with printed-up trillions while suppressing economic activity was no problem.”
“Already, many sources of rising prices are filtering through into the US economy. Even if they are transitory on paper, they may feed into expectations just as they did in the 1970s. The risk then, is that even if they are only embedded for a few months they may be difficult to contain, especially with stimulus so high.”
Related: CPI inflation indicator hits 5 percent.
“Trillions of dollars of proposed new deficit spending would further increase inflation, and would mostly stimulate the politically connected. The Federal Reserve should resist political pressure to further flood the money supply in hopes of stimulating a faster COVID recovery.”
Think about it. Since late 2008 (with the exception of the 25 month interval beginning December 2016 after President Trump won the 2016 election through December 2018, when the supposedly apolitical Fed raised short rate targets eight times from 0.25% – 0.50% to 2.25% – 2.50%), the Fed and World CB’s have kept (James Grant calls it ‘financial fascism’) at near-zero. Let’s go to the video tape – Is the World Better off for all that artificial rate repression? I do not see it.
In conclusion, the live Biden voters are dumber than dirt. Chinese Joe’s fictitious voters don’t pretend anything they only exist in Xerox machines.
I think not only the USA but the entire World would be better off if the Fed never existed.
The alternative is a gold peg. You don’t want to go there.
Art,
I love you, man.
The MIT, etc. econ PhDs’ and politicians’ pegs have been soooo much better.
They have been. Gold pegs get you what happened in the occidental world over the period running from 1928 to 1934. You want to see what a contemporary equivalent looks like, see the Greek economy over the last dozen years.
Art,
I still love you, man.