Government harms those it means to help

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A column by economist Thomas Sowell Preserving a Vision–at the Expense of the Facts tells just how harmful big-government liberalism is to those it aims to help. In particular, black families have been harmed. “… the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example.”

After the end of slavery, blacks started to advance in America. Even though they were often discriminated against — both informally and formally by government, as in the case of Jim Crow laws — they were making progress in education and economically, too. But then government gets involved and wants to “help.” Here’s the legacy:

One of the most telling examples of the social destructiveness of the left’s welfare-state vision can be found among the white slum dwellers in Britain described in the brilliant and insightful book “Life at the Bottom” by Theodore Dalrymple.

There it is not possible to blame social degeneracy on slavery, racism or any of the other things cited as causes of the behavior and consequences found among blacks in American slums. Yet the results are virtually identical, right down to children beating up classmates for trying to get an education.

But the left will not admit its mistake, and continues to doom a class of Americans to failure.

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