Here’s Another Definition of Insanity: Refusing to Identify the Problem that Needs Solving (but Cannot be Solved), Whether in 60 Years of Nation-Wrecking Social Policy, or in an 851-Word Book Review

By Nicholas Stix

Here’s another definition of insanity: Refusing to identify the problem that needs solving (but cannot be solved), whether in 60 years of nation-wrecking social policy, or in an 851-word book review.

The book in question is Amity Shlaes’ November 19, 2019 work, Great Society: A New History.

First, I read Joanna D.’s review; I just read Amity Shlaes’ introduction. I was disappointed both times.

Reviews


Joanna D.

#1 HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWERVINE VOICE
4.0 out of 5 stars The “Great Society” and its roots in today’s issues
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2019
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(Amazon)

This is a very important book by Amity Shlaes (“The Forgotten Man” a history of the Great Depression.) Ideas and concepts that are mainstream and sort of a “given” these days had their embryo stage in FDR’s “New Deal” but really were fully birthed in the 1960’s. I have the advantage of having lived through those times and seen the outcomes of these programs among people I knew and worked with and attended school with. This book goes over the roots of the Great Society, a plan to reduce rural and urban poverty and how it has shaped the problems we face today.

Shlaes spends time on the socialist roots of such programs as housing developments and welfare. One thing I take exception to is her passing off “bulldozing of streets people loved in the name of moving them into public housing slums they didn’t love.” Yes, this happened. But it wasn’t just socialism and progressivism in play here, although the idea of high rises as modern and more sanitary is part of it. The reason for high rises was a [due to rent control, and racist, Southern blacks’ insistence on taking over Northern cities!] housing shortage that continued after WWII and the Baby Boom, a movement of people from the poor rural South and Appalachia to urban centers with jobs and cheapness of construction compared to single family housing. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project is of course a feature of the story here, famously imploded after its failure, but the reasons for its failure are not simple. The projects didn’t fail because people didn’t like living there compared to old city neighborhoods. I actually knew people who had lived there--poor white farmers who moved out of impoverished Kentucky to take factory jobs in St. Louis and house their families in better digs with floors, central heating and plumbing. They loved it--at first. But a design flaw of breezeways and gathering points--and a mix of populations of different race and cultures and then the recessions and then hyper-inflation that battered those factory jobs led to the very modern features of gathering points being not neighborhood meeting spots but crime centers. It got so bad, people were afraid to exit their apartments and ultimately, the crime-infested project had to be abandoned and taken down. Future housing projects were eventually smaller, ground floor townhouse style or Section 8, existing housing rented at a subsidy and accomplished much more successfully.

[N.S.: But government didn’t move people “into public housing slums they didn’t love.” It moved them, at whites’ expense, into brand, spanking new buildings that blacks proceeded to destroy in no time at all. Nobody builds “slums.” Black criminals turn projects into slums. (Also Hispanic “immigrants” who jam too many people into apartments.) Not that they had loved the old streets, either. The crime problem was a black and, eventually Hispanic problem. Whites made no contribution to that problem, but they sure suffered from it. “A design flaw”?! And yet, you couldn’t use racial segregation to create whites-only projects, thanks to the civil rights laws, which Shlaes praises as an unalloyed good. I am not aware of anything good that came out of them.

“Accomplished much more successfully”? What on Earth does that mean?]

However, where this book shines is that it tracks the progression from Socialism and Communism being treated as anti-American to it becoming ingrained as a normal solution to societal problems; welfare for mothers (but not for the out of work husbands, ended up weakening families) Some of the catchphrases of the times were “Urban Renewal” which wags redubbed “Urban Removal” Shlaes posits that it was a continuation of the vast expansion of the Federal Government (with good jobs and pensions) that started in the New Deal. Moreover, the Great Society plans moved urban renewal and other programs from state control to Federal, taking tax money out and local control as well. This point alone that Shlaes makes is a foreshadowing of the struggle that now is happening between Federal mandates (often without funding) and states being weakened to the point where a governor job is barely more than a city mayor, compared to the power pre-1960s that a governorship entailed.

[Under racial socialism such struggles become irrelevant, as social policy at the state and federal level consists of robbing and disenfranchising hard-working, law-abiding whites, in order to advantage black and Hispanic criminals and deadbeats, whether citizens or illegal human beings.]

The struggle of states vs feds is well outlined and I can’t recall another history book of recent publication that details this important change to our government as set up under the Constitution. (States were sovereign nations almost, with the Federal government have limited enumerated powers only.)

Another point Shlaes makes: for the first time, Federal spending on entitlement outstripped defense spending and to this day. It ballooned to 40 percent by the 80’s and now it’s over 70 percent. This despite constant war activity almost non-stop since World War II (the Korean, the Cold, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, now the longest war in US history) despite the nonstop military action, the entitlements are the lion’s share of spending and we are deeply in debt and servicing that debt.

As a result of the “Great Society” spending, taxes rose precipitously and at the same time, a twelve year malaise had the Dow enter and exit at the same 1,000 level.

This book may not be for everyone, it certainly has a conservative take HOWEVER, the numbers are telling and also the fact that here we are, forty years later from the Sixties and the urban scene is no better for millions, in fact, you could argue it’s worse and lots has been spent to what end? Worth reading to make sure you understand the scope of the issues and what worked and what did NOT work. Doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. And may be the definition of insolvency, too.

[Oh, it “has a conservative take.” What on Earth is that supposed to mean? Conserve what?]