Bob Woodson says his philosophy is “radical pragmatism.”
He started with the civil rights movement, but noted that those who were supposedly helping poor people were in face hindering them.
Until Sixties, 85 percent of black families had a man and woman raising their children. The black community’s strong values protected them against some of the damage of prejudice.
We’ve spent $22 trillion on the poor over five decades — but out of every dollar, seventy cents when to the poverty bureaucrats.
Destroying the family would pave the way for socialism, he said. And within ten years of the poverty program’s beginning, out-of-wedlock births soared. Black and urban communities have suffered.
For example, Detroit has been run by liberals for decades. “Now it looks like Hiroshima after the bombing,” he said.
“The principles in our market economy should prevail in our cultural economy,” he said.
He looks at the paradigm of Joseph in the Bible. Too many social scientists study pathology. “You learn nothing from studying failure except failure.”
We should study those who still embody our founding virtues. “What’s their secret sauce?”
Joseph didn’t succumb to resentment or despair, though unjustly accused. Those who have had tough times can turn their lives around, despite the toxic neighborhoods around them.
“Some people are just broke, but their character is intact,” he said. “They use the welfare system as an ambulance system, not a transportation system.”
There are different kinds of poor people, and we have to understand the differences. Both the left and right assume there is only one kind of poor person.
We conservatives must “go into those neighborhoods and find those Josephs,” Woodson said.
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