[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 17 (Thursday, February 24, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       SLOUCHING TOWARD DYSTOPIA

                                 ______


                          HON. BOB LIVINGSTON

                              of louisiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 24, 1994

  Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert into the 
Congressional Record a terrific column by Michael Barone, which 
discusses the thesis of the distinguished Charles Murray to the effect 
that we should abolish welfare. Murray says that welfare has probably 
caused far more social and economic problems than it has solved, and he 
is probably right.
  Anyway, Barone's essay speaks for itself: Politicians should indeed 
consider Murray's thesis with all seriousness, before our current 
welfare system ruins too many more lives than it arguably already has.
  The column follows:

             [From U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 20, 1993]

                       Slouching Toward Dystopia

                          (By Michael Barone)

       In this optimistic season, two thoughtful writers warn that 
     we are stumbling toward dystopia. That's the opposite of 
     utopia--a situation, says Webster, ``in which conditions and 
     the quality of life are dreadful.''
       Begin with Charles Murray, whose October Wall Street 
     Journal op-ed piece, ``The Coming White Underclass,'' is 
     still crackling in Washington and around the country. Murray 
     recalls that when New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote 
     his 1965 warning about the disintegration of the black 
     family, 26 percent of black births were to unwed mothers. 
     Today, the figure among whites is 22 percent--only 4 
     percentage points lower. Meanwhile, the share of African-
     American births out of wedlock has soared to 68 percent, and 
     we now have a criminal underclass that is terrorizing certain 
     neighborhoods and producing horrors visible to all on local 
     nightly newscasts. Murray now predicts that illegitimacy 
     rates will increase as rapidly among low-income whites in the 
     1990s as they did among low-income blacks in the 1960s: ``You 
     will have an underclass that is about four or five times the 
     size of the one we have now,'' he said in a recent appearance 
     on ``This Week With David Brinkley.''
       The result: a country with a Latin American level of 
     violence and the possibility that Latin authoritarianism 
     could follow. The United States today has 11 murders per 
     100,000 members of the population. Colombia, despite brave 
     efforts by public officials, registers 70 per 100,000--about 
     the same as Washington, D.C. In this dystopia, the affluent 
     would most likely live as they do in Latin America--behind 
     walls topped with shards of glass and with riflemen 
     patrolling their lawns. And the great mass of people would 
     live as many of our poorest citizens do today--in a society 
     where violent males kill other men and abuse women.
       How do we avoid this dystopia? Murray's answer: We must 
     abolish welfare, all of it, for unmarried women. Encourage 
     adoption, let extended families provide help, set up decent 
     orphanages for children whose mothers cannot and whose 
     fathers will not take care of them. But do not make payments 
     that have the effect of supporting and sanctioning the 
     existence of a criminal underclass.
       Multicultural dangers. Journalist William McGowan found his 
     dystopia in Sri Lanka, a once peaceful country with a 
     parliamentary democracy and a British legal system. The 
     unraveling of Sri Lankan society began with ethnic and 
     religious quotas in schools and jobs, which led to riots, to 
     ``razor wire and guard dogs,'' and to civil war in 1983. 
     ``Sri Lanka failed to build a stable multiethnic, 
     multicultural society because it embraced many of the very 
     concepts and ideas that multiculturalists in the West have 
     advocated,'' McGowan wrote in his 1992 book, Only Man Is 
     Vile.
       Today, in New York, there are some dangerous similarities: 
     racial quotas and preferences that have produced racially 
     charged politics, casting a cloud over the genuine 
     achievements of the intended beneficiaries. Quota efforts to 
     promote ``diversity'' have produced biased and incomplete 
     news coverage, notably in the New York Times in this year's 
     mayoral race. McGowan warns that ``identity politics can be 
     extraordinarily divisive, and can polarize a nation's 
     politics, undermining economic productivity, weakening its 
     educational institutions and straining the bonds that tie a 
     people together.'' The United States, even New York City, is 
     a long way from Sri Lanka but may be on the same road. All 
     the evil effects of ``identity politics'' are already 
     apparent.
       If Murray and McGowan are right, two public policies--
     welfare for unwed mothers and racial and ethnic quotas--are 
     moving us toward dystopia. Yet both policies were adopted 
     only incidentally. Welfare originally was intended for widows 
     and divorcees, and Frances Perkins, Franklin Roosevelt's 
     labor secretary, almost got unwed mothers excluded on moral 
     grounds; at the time, no one imagined that illegitimacy would 
     burgeon as it has. For their part, racial and ethnic quotas 
     were adopted by courts and the Nixon administration as a way 
     to speed the desegregation of American institutions.
       Now, Republicans routinely campaign against quotas but have 
     done nothing about them in office; Democrats claim to be 
     against them, but have supported them utterly. There is a 
     lesson in experience: The great universities have imposed 
     quotas, which has sparked violence, censorship and discord 
     among students, while the military has insisted on 
     colorblindness--and is now the most integrated and racially 
     fair segment of our society. The Clinton administration, 
     which hasn't yet filled two key civil rights positions, could 
     do a Nixon-on-China and abolish quotas; unfortunately, it has 
     staffed its own administration using a quota system that has 
     yielded many women and black graduates of elite law schools 
     and precious few Vietnam veterans or white ethnics.
       On welfare reform, the administration is still mulling. But 
     all its present plans call for continued subsidy of unwed 
     mothers, and none of its opponents or critics has the nerve 
     to call for consideration of Murray's solution. The will is 
     there among the voters to get off the road to Charles 
     Murray's and William McGowan's dystopias. But the politicians 
     seem willing to let us stumble on.

                          ____________________