Reddit reviews Democracy in America

Just go with this one: http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-America-Alexis-Tocqueville/dp/0226805360

It's a good and cheap version.

You think that's profound you should read this

>I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

REPOST

this

"Some might find it puzzling that during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower and blacks were more active in the labor force than they are today. Up until the late 1950s, the labor force participation rate of black teens and adults was equal to or greater than their white counterparts. In fact, in 1910, 71 percent of black males older than 9 were employed, compared with 51 percent for whites. As early as 1890, the duration of unemployment among blacks was shorter than it was among whites, whereas today unemployment is both higher and longer-lasting among blacks than among whites.

How might one explain yesteryear's lower black unemployment and greater labor force participation? The usual academic, civil rights or media racial discrimination explanation for black/white socio-economic differences just wouldn't hold up. I can't imagine even the most harebrained professor, civil rights leader or media "expert" arguing that there was less discrimination a century ago and that explains why there was greater black labor market participation. Racial discrimination or low skills can explain low wages but not unemployment."

from here

Hey, have some more:

"The effects of this new law were immediate - about 500,000 blacks were thrown out of work when this law passed. And this is just the minimum wage law. There were a whole host of other programs, agencies, bureacracies and payouts created that were intended either to aid poor folks, end poverty or fight discrimination. And with few exceptions, these programs have all failed. Since the 30s, the size of government as a proportion of our Gross Domestic Product - the overall size of our economy - has gone from 2% to about 23%. So government has grown more than ten times as big as it used to be, and black unemployment has more than doubled over that same time period. Think that's a coincidence?"


How about some Thomas Sowell:

War on Poverty Revisited
THOMAS SOWELL (2004.08.17 )
August 20th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his “War on Poverty” program in 1964.

Never had there been such a comprehensive program to tackle poverty at its roots, to offer more opportunities to those starting out in life, to rehabilitate those who had fallen by the wayside, and to make dependent people self-supporting. Its intentions were the best. But we know what road is paved with good intentions.

The War on Poverty represented the crowning triumph of the liberal vision of society — and of government programs as the solution to social problems. The disastrous consequences that followed have made the word “liberal” so much of a political liability that today even candidates with long left-wing track records have evaded or denied that designation.

In the liberal vision, slums bred crime. But brand-new government housing projects almost immediately became new centers of crime and quickly degenerated into new slums. Many of these projects later had to be demolished. Unfortunately, the assumptions behind those projects were not demolished, but live on in other disastrous programs, such as Section 8 housing.

Rates of teenage pregnancy and venereal disease had been going down for years before the new 1960s attitudes toward sex spread rapidly through the schools, helped by War on Poverty money. These downward trends suddenly reversed and skyrocketed.

The murder rate had also been going down, for decades, and in 1960 was just under half of what it had been in 1934. Then the new 1960s policies toward curing the “root causes” of crime and creating new “rights” for criminals began. Rates of violent crime, including murder, skyrocketed.

The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.

Government social programs such as the War on Poverty were considered a way to reduce urban riots. Such programs increased sharply during the 1960s. So did urban riots. Later, during the Reagan administration, which was denounced for not promoting social programs, there were far fewer urban riots.

Neither the media nor most of our educational institutions question the assumptions behind the War on Poverty. Even conservatives often attribute much of the progress that has been made by lower-income people to these programs.

For example, the usually insightful quarterly magazine City Journal says in its current issue: “Beginning in the mid-sixties, the condition of most black Americans improved markedly.”

That is completely false and misleading.

The economic rise of blacks began decades earlier, before any of the legislation and policies that are credited with producing that rise. The continuation of the rise of blacks out of poverty did not — repeat, did not — accelerate during the 1960s.

The poverty rate among black families fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s, but this continuation of the previous trend was neither unprecedented nor something to be arbitrarily attributed to the programs like the War on Poverty.

In various skilled trades, the incomes of blacks relative to whites more than doubled between 1936 and 1959 — that is, before the magic 1960s decade when supposedly all progress began. The rise of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations was greater in the five years preceding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years afterwards.

While some good things did come out of the 1960s, as out of many other decades, so did major social disasters that continue to plague us today. Many of those disasters began quite clearly during the 1960s.

But what are mere facts compared to a heady vision? Liberal assumptions — “two Americas,” for example — are being recycled this election year, even by candidates who evade the “liberal” label.

The Myth of Red State Welfare

Excerpt, cause I know you're too lazy to read all of this:

"First off, states that are either "haves" (i.e., give more to the federal government than they receive) or "have-nots" (i.e., get more from the federal government than they give) do not just arise overnight. State finances take decades to develop as either "haves" or "have-nots," so looking at only a single election is meaningless. Rather, we need to look at how a state has voted over several decades to obtain any relevant insights.
Furthermore, it's equally nonsensical to just consider how a state votes for the president. We also need to look at how each state votes for its senators, representatives, and even governors. Given how Congress has the "power of the purse," this is core to assessing how a state's welfare status relates to its Democrat versus Republican voting record. And this is where the "red state welfare" hypothesis disintegrates.
The following table shows the percentage of person-years between 1980 and 2013 for which each of the top and bottom welfare states voted Democrat at the presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial levels.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/the_myth_of_red_state_welfare.html#ixzz2hmJxi8IZ
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook"


Hey, you want a chart?

HERE YA GO