I heard about this book from another blogger and ordered it excited to learn more about the pathology of poorness and how it persist through generations. It was presented to me as an in depth insight into the many components that make up the working and poorer class, including government, family structure, education, culture, expectations and the mentality of the poor themselves. It turned out to be a harsh one sided critique of how 'those darn liberals' are really responsible for allowing criminals, gangsters and vagrants to ruin civilized western society by being soft on crime and not supporting rigorous compulsory education. Needless to say I was disappointed for 3 main reasons:1. He conflates criminals, vagrants and gangsters with the poor (not used in the pejorative). I don't have to tell you how ridiculous and elementary this strawman argument is. You can't prologue on the poor, make your argument based on thuggery and then hint that the reason poorness persist is because liberals won't do anything about thuggery??? If you think liberals are soft on crime and weak on education, that's fine, but that's another argument, and one that should only be debated if you buy the premise that thugs and poor people are one in the same....methinks not.
2. I'm weary of liberals and conservatives who write or opine, while not admitting that any of the views to which they are predisposed ARE apart of the problem. These problems (poorness, crime, economic collapse, war, joblessness, et al) don't exist in a video game, that is there is no algorithm to which you plug in a set of values and get a right/wrong decision back. So anytime I hear people use phrases like "you conservatives..." or "liberals just want...." I realize the chance for seriousness discussion of the issues has dramatically decreased.
3. Theodore Dalrymple, the author, made no serious effort to include anecdotes or research that opposed or even tempered his hard line view. I like to think that serious thinkers don't do so in a vacuum. There are variables and inputs that must be accounted for, and painting everyone the color of your experiences, regardless of how vast you claim they are, doesn't make much sense, and doesn't help advance a debate.
Next Up: Bastiat's The Law
