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Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs

By Jeralyn, Section Media
Posted on Mon Jul 18, 2005 at 12:16:00 PM EST
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Check out this hilarious column by the Minneapolis Star Tribune's conservative writer Katherine Kersten about how a spike in gang crime can be attributed to "the debilitating attitudes of the '60s," which were brought to us by liberal "intellectuals, lawyers, and entertainment executives."

In particular, she blames sexual freedom and social welfare programs.

The '60s revolution was about personal "liberation." Recreational sex? "Make love, not war." Drugs? "Whatever turns you on." Teachers, parents and police? "Challenge authority."

The '60s also launched the War on Poverty. Though well-intentioned, it created incentives for self-destructive behavior such as out-of-wedlock childbearing and welfare dependence. Its mantra was that the poor are victims without responsibilities, whose behavior has nothing to do with their plight.

[Via Paul at Eye Teeth]

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    Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs | 46 comments (46 topical)
    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#40)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:12 PM EST
    webmacher-
    “we end up paying for those people anyway, in health costs. Are hospital emergency rooms supposed to just turn them away?”
    The assumption is that health care costs for ‘deadbeats’ would rise once the public assistance was pulled. This isn’t entirely clear. In any event, the healthcare of these folks should be the business of private charity. It is unreasonable to coerce hard working folks into paying for, say, the repeated cleaning of needle lesions for an IV drug user. I see this as the place of church and charity run hospitals and clinics.
    “What about the kids?”
    This is certainly the most difficult problem. Speaking of needle lesions, while doing a rotation in a local ER my wife had the displeasure of cleaning several deep ones for a man while in the company of his son. She was admonished by her attending as the man was apparently recommended by one of my wife’s previous patients who had also come in for needle lesions. The attending asked her to make it as unpleasant as possible in order to keep his ER from becoming a favorite among junkies. Anyway, kids; how do we make life better for the children of folks that are comfortable with the violent and sick lifestyle of a drug addict? I don’t know that giving these parents the money to maintain this lifestyle is a solution, let along a good solution. I guess a good first step would be to keep these folks from having more kids. Why not make it mandatory for a woman or man on public assistance to take birth control in exchange for their check?
    “, while families are spending less on food, appliances, gadgets, entertainment, etc — these things have gotten cheaper, amazingly — they are spending a bigger percentage of their money on insurance and housing”
    The data I linked to was in inflation adjusted dollars, that is the figures were adjusted for parity in the purchasing power of a given dollar including those goods that may contribute disproportionately to inflation, i.e. housing, insurance, energy, and so forth. Mrs. Warren has mistaken consumer trends in housing for something else altogether. Since 1950 the average house size has doubled. Today’s families are smaller and they are living in much larger houses. If anything, Mrs. Warren has highlighted a crisis of expectations and not a crisis of deficit.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#1)
    by aw on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    Maybe she really meant the 1860's. See Gangs of New York.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#2)
    by Quaker in a Basement on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    She seems to be reading from the Book of Bork. With the impending fight over two seats on the Supreme Court, I decided to look into Bork's Slouching Toward Gomorrah. The columnist might have lifted that passage from Bork verbatim.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#3)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    How many traumatized men came home from WWII, then Korea -- when we dismissed their psychological injuries as mere "combat fatigue" -- to create the narcotized, post-traumatic 1950's, which bred the rebellious 1960's? Oh wait, that's actually using logic and history. Where do guys like this columnist come from? Literally. That is far more interesting than the crap they write.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    "... incentives for self-destructive behavior such as out-of-wedlock childbearing and welfare dependence." I haven't had time to read the linked column yet, but this is a true statement, at least where I live. When my child was born the person in charge of administering social programs at our local health center encouraged my fiancee to say she was a single parent to increase the aid she could get, and said whatever we do don't get married. She was visibly irritated when we said nobody was going to say our baby had no father.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#5)
    by theologicus on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    Maybe she's onto something. Would her explanation for crime in the streets apply also to crime in the suites?

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    And don't forget it was Clinton's fault as well. What.A.Load.Of.Crap.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#7)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    Its mantra was that the poor are victims without responsibilities, whose behavior has nothing to do with their plight.
    There is a great deal of truth here; I don’t think I have ever heard/seen proponents of welfare hold up anything more than the ‘hard worker fallen on harder times’ exemplar as justification for what is in my estimation a dysfunctional system. If these are the lion’s share of folks on welfare the bums must be infinitely more visible. The previous five years I lived directly adjacent to a subsidized housing complex. I want to know how the guy pulling state housing dollars could drive a 2002 Mustang while I’m paying all my own bills and can only afford to drive a 1985 Aries. I want to know why that drunk pi$$ing in my front yard can afford that shopping cart filled with beer but isn’t expected to pay rent. At the grocery store I see folks using food assistance to buy frozen prepared meals and name brand junk food, but of course buying cheap beer and generic cigs with their own cash. Not to mention the spun crackhead trading food assistance for cash (as if that lame card could stop them). The last time someone offered to pay for my groceries with their food assistance card her face was covered in scabs, she was missing a shoe, and obviously crashing. I would love, just once, to see the welfare proponents acknowledge what we all know; welfare subsidizes drug addicts and the voluntarily unemployed.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    And before I'm accused of being anti-poor, anti-woman, anti-whatever, I'm not passing judgment on welfare recipients, single mothers, etc. These programs provide a valuable and necessary service. But there's sometimes not enough incentive to get off these programs, and instead there's more incentive to treat them as entitlements, as I described above.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    pigwiggle... Good post. Most (thinking) people would have agree with most of what you said. We all know that once you are on welfare, they make it very hard to get off. I'll go out on the limb here and blame the bleeding heart left for most of this....

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#10)
    by Joe Bob on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    If you attribute poverty and its related pathologies to people's personal failings it creates a convenient excuse not to do anything about it. It also lends a sense of smug superiority to people who are looking for that sort of satisfaction. Personally, I think things like the near obliteration of the American manufacturing sector have a lot more to do with the travails of the 'underclass' than the sexual revolution. My grandfather was able to support a family of five with a job at GE and a high school education. Is that opportunity available to the typical high school grad these days? Not so much. I also have to wonder if the "debilitating attitudes of the '60s" include such things as civil rights and equality for women? The good old days weren't so great if you were black or female. 'This kind' of gang culture is new? Please. It didn't exist in this form in the 1930s? Were the likes of Al Capone and Bugsy Siegal a kinder, gentler form of gangster? I also just love how Kersten includes herself among the "Ordinary citizens [who]view human nature more realistically." This coming from a member of the party that both decrys teenage motherhood and refuses to teach them about birth control. There was a time when you could count on Republicans to be the cold-hearted realists. If only that were still true. Instead we have the ideologues like Kersten, living in cloud cuckoo land, harkening back to a time when everyone knew their place and transgressors were properly dealt with.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#11)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    What can I say, the Conservatives here in MN are just getting crazyier and crazyier. And further to the right every day.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    When my child was born the person in charge of administering social programs at our local health center encouraged my fiancee to say she was a single parent to increase the aid she could get, and said whatever we do don't get married. She was visibly irritated when we said nobody was going to say our baby had no father.
    That reminds me of a couple I was distantly acquainted with. The man was in med school but not working yet; the woman had chronic health problems that prevented her from working, and she was on SSI. They wanted to get married... but if they had, she would have lost her SSI money and he couldn't support her at that point. So they had to wait until he was working. Dysfunctional system indeed.
    I would love, just once, to see the welfare proponents acknowledge what we all know; welfare subsidizes drug addicts and the voluntarily unemployed.
    Yes, those people exist. The system as it exists isn't addressing that issue or getting those people out of their ruts. We all have seen or even know someone of that description. On the other hand... I don't know how you get ALL deadbeats out of a system. There are some people that take advantage of every situation. That's true at every level. We have a capitalism-centric system here in the United States, intended to make it easy (well, somewhat) to have a business and for that business to get really big. And we've all heard about the mind-boggling corporate excesses of the dot-com era, and the indictments, the bankruptcies, and so on and so on. Yet if we called for getting rid of all incentives for businesses to operate here, or decided to check capitalism, I'm sure there'd be a massive outcry. And rightly so. I don't know how you keep from paying for addicts one way or another. If you kicked them all off the rolls, they'd still end up in the hospital. What's the emergency room going to do, let them die outside the front door? What if an addict has kids. Sure, cut off the addict, but punish the kids for the sins of the parents? And what about the percentage of people receiving welfare who ARE trying to play by the rules? How do you avoid hurting them? Any people on this board have some real-world experience with this?

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#13)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    Er, make that "CHUCK capitalism", not "check". Whoopsies!

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#14)
    by Joe Bob on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    If being on welfare were such a laugh riot with plenty of new cars, cigarettes and beer you would think that more people would be on it. I don't like to see able-bodied adults on welfare more than anyone else. As long as there's a welfare system there will be undeserving recipients and people who abuse the system. Nonetheless, in my mind, a welfare check is often the one thing stopping someone from leaving the underclass and wholeheartedly joining the criminal class.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#15)
    by nolo on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    I love the fact that nothing bad ever happened before the 1960s, and there were never any thugs, scam artists, lazy people or opportunists before the advent of the Summer of Love (or, one presumes, nine months thereafter).

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#16)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    As an upper-class white liberal, who lived with my young single mom on welfare in the late sixties/early seventies, I have yet to hear a "conservative" on this thread really address the issue. Those who work with those on welfare, housing assitance, etc. -- having also worked in that capacity myself -- are fully aware of the large percentage of dysfunctional cases with which they deal. It's really a matter of addressing a gigantic problem with the meager resources you're given. Don't forget, these are the people who are at the very bottom. They are the last hired and the first fired. Unless we make a decision as a society to not let it get that far. Unless we understand that it's wiser and economically and socially less costly to nurture people in a BETTER manner than we do now, in a more comprehensive manner, than it is to throw them to the streets. But we're always looking to cut costs in the very places where we can't afford anything but a greater investment. Which is what it is, when done right, with the necessary resources and support. What's the alternative. Millions of dysfunctional, unemployable, barely educated people thrown to chance? I don't think that's in anyone's interest. But...perception is reality. And the perception is the poor are the problem, not part of the solution.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#17)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    “My grandfather was able to support a family of five with a job at GE and a high school education. Is that opportunity available to the typical high school grad these days?”
    Your grandfather supported his family at a lower standard of living than his counterpart today. For better or worse a high school education won’t qualify most for middleclass sustaining jobs. However folks have kept up; the living standard for everyone, poor or middle class or rich, is better today than in the revered back when.
    “The system as it exists isn't addressing that issue or getting those people out of their ruts. … I don't know how you get ALL deadbeats out of a system.”
    The simple solution is to cut the funds for these folks. Giving money to a drug addict facilitates their lifestyle to their detriment; feeding their addiction is hardly compassionate. The best way to cut ‘deadbeats’ out of welfare is to allow individuals to donate to those they consider worthy. Certainly folks I consider deadbeats would get charity, but not my charity.
    “If being on welfare were such a laugh riot with plenty of new cars, cigarettes and beer you would think that more people would be on it.”
    I’m sure self-respect keeps a lot of folks from gaming the system.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#18)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    That should'v read "upper-middle class", but I'll accept the freudian slip of it. And that, compared to the rest of the world, I am a rich man indeed. Nothing like the subconscious.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#19)
    by roy on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    The book Freakonomics (which is more serious than the name suggests) has an interesting counter-point. The writer claims that the crime rate drop in the mid/late nineties was due to legalization and availability of abortion. Children who would be born into criminal-inducing circumstances were instead aborted. Unsavory, but plausible (I didn't try to find the raw data to back up the claim). So even if Kersten is on the right track, maybe the late seventies crime boom wasn't caused by liberalization, but by doing only a half-ars*d job of liberalization.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#20)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    The simple solution is to cut the funds for these folks. Giving money to a drug addict facilitates their lifestyle to their detriment; feeding their addiction is hardly compassionate. The best way to cut ‘deadbeats’ out of welfare is to allow individuals to donate to those they consider worthy. Certainly folks I consider deadbeats would get charity, but not my charity.
    Yes, but to repeat the parts of my post you apparently didn't read, 1) we end up paying for those people anyway, in health costs. Are hospital emergency rooms supposed to just turn them away? 2) What about the kids? 3) how do you avoid punishing the people who ARE trying to play by the rules? It's very easy to say "cut them off without a cent," but the reality isn't so simple. Also, re the whole standard of living thing... also not so simple. I heard a program on NPR a while back about "the two-income trap" in which author Elizabeth Warren made the point that, while families are spending less on food, appliances, gadgets, entertainment, etc — these things have gotten cheaper, amazingly — they are spending a bigger percentage of their money on insurance and housing. So where one income could cover it before, now there are two people working, but neither of them can pay for everything themselves... and g*d help them if one of them loses their job. Click the link; it's interesting.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#21)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    "I would love, just once, to see the welfare proponents acknowledge what we all know; welfare subsidizes drug addicts and the voluntarily unemployed." Well, my Eviromental Law prof in college acknowledged it - in fact he said that, because it's a free country, it's every person's right to choose to work or not, and if someone chooses not to work then it is the responsibility of the state to support him. Out of the entire class, I ws the only one who dared question this statement. Looking back, I believe that was the defining moment for me when I realized, to my utter shock, that I wasn't a lib and that I wouldn't be voting for Carter again in the upcoming election.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#22)
    by Quaker in a Basement on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:21 PM EST
    I tried Googling up some numbers to describe the demographics of welfare recipients. Darn hard to find. However, I did turn up this gem: estimated percentage of welfare recipients with disabilities or children with disabilities--45-70 percent.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#23)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    sarc., sometimes professors make statements like that to see if anyone WILL disagree with them. and i'd suggest you weren't a LIBERAL LIKE HE WAS, and not drop the entire words because of one professor. I had an affair with the single most liberal, avant garde, lefty prof i ever had, at a large public souther california university, and even she wouldn't say stuff that blanketly our there. But she did give me a B-minus in the class. And I've never gotten over it. That minus, that damn minus. The B I could handle, but the minus torments me still. Was it a technique issue? A stamina question? Still, since the common image is of the young FEMALE college student seduced by her older MALE professor, having reversed that equation, I did feel like I was in another world, on one of those old school Star Trek planets where all the hot alien women wear push-up bras and speak English. But I digress. Absurdly.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#24)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    You say this is hilarious but people seem to post hilarious things like this all the time. Things like this need to be ridiculed, true, but it's very hard to laugh when this crap is taken seriously where hunger in the world is swept under the carpet.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#25)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    im a deadbeat. im disabled. you cant tell it by looking at me from across the street. i wish i could buy a 2002 mustang

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#26)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    Caught in their lies and their gross predation on the National Treasury, it's time TO BLAME THE POOR. How many of these cycles I have seen in my long life! And the Rs are so repetitive, they are like a species of one-line idiots. Attacking immigrants and poor is inherently racist. It is no surprise that the people here with such POIGNANT stories of human degredation brought about by living near poor people or people on welfare -- comes from the SAME people who shout Kill them All at every (safe) opportunity. Get yer brownshirts on! It's time to go bash the poor, the immigrant, the racially impure. Because otherwise the crimes committed will turn into CONVICTIONS for our 'heroes.' These same people support and readily defend rich predators on the Nation, like Ken Lay, and MASSIVE corporate subsidies tied not to overall productivity for the economy, but to barely-legal and illegal "donations." Halliburton has just announced a 'new' type of processing plant which converts Treasury greenbacks to private bank accounts in Switzerland. Oorah.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#27)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    didnt hitler exterminate cripples and other defectives

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#28)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    Dadler, I went to a generally apolitical engineering school. His point was that you can't tell someone what to do, you can't make someone do something if they don't want to do it, i.e., work, if they don't want to. And if that person chosses not to work and therefore can't get food, clothing, shelter, etc. - and can only do so by working - then, in effect, you are telling him to work. My argument, 20+ years ago, was that, with welfare, if he chooses not to work, then he tells us/makes us to do something, that is, give him our money that we chose to work for. I had many discussions with this prof, I became friends with his daughter who was in the same class, we all planted trees together on Arbor Day, etc., - he was guiless, he said what he believed. And no, perhaps I exaggerated, it was not just this incident that made me realize I wasn't a liberal, it was many such incidents - however this prof and this discussion sure helped me clarify.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#29)
    by john horse on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:22 PM EST
    Yes, the 60's launched the War on Poverty and you know what happened, poverty went down dramatically. It went down so dramatically that in the 60's people were actually thinking that it could be eliminated. But then came the conservatives and instead of being eliminated its been ignored.

    Re: Columnist Blames '60's Liberals for Gangs (none / 0) (#30)
    by