President Bush And Blacks

PRESIDENT Bush’s domestic signature in 2000 was “compassionate conservatism,” resulting in two domestic initiatives: No Child Left Behind and “faith-based” outreach to the poor, writes Mona Charen.

In other words the Republican president was concentrating his programmatic domestic agenda not on helping and paying off Republican voters but on trying to make a dent in the awful mess in the underclass.

So black and poverty leaders are ecstatic, right? Can’t get enough of the compassionate conservative George W. Bush?

Er no. Quite the opposite. Of course, this is nothing new. Black leaders didn’t like Reagan and Bush 39.

But from the beginning, George W. Bush was painted as the devil by many black leaders. It’s remarkable that this was so, considering Mr. Bush’s steadfast and unwavering interest in the poor and minorities, but there it is.

Now, of course the results are in and test scores are up in inner-city schools.

Education Week reported last month that student achievement in math and reading has risen over the past several years, with particularly strong improvements noted among fourth-graders in both subjects. Significantly, the gap between minorities and other students has narrowed.

Where’s the grudging acknowledgement of respect? Well, it’s nowhere, of course.

The thing is this. We conservatives don’t expect to get an even break from traditional Democratic groups, even when we go out of our way to help the poor and the marginalized. So we console oursleves with the notion that we do the right thing anyway.

But when political activists and voters don’t recognize and don’t understand who is helping them and who is hindering there is a price to be paid. The price, of course, does not get paid by the suits. It gets paid by the poor and the vulnerable. And that’s worse than a shame. It’s an injustice.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0