Three liberal programs of the 1960's that failed

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Thomas Sowell cites three liberal programs of the 1960's that failed (and failed dramatically):

1. The War on Poverty

2. Woke legal policies

3. Sex education

See

The Failure of Woke Policies (From 'The Great Society' to Present Day) | Thomas Sowell

How the US Lost the 'War on Poverty' | Thomas Sowell

How Woke Legal Policies Failed | Thomas Sowell

How 'Reproductive Health' Education Policies in Schools Failed | Thomas Sowell

He used statistics from the period before the policies were initiated and then the same statistics 15 or 20 years after the initiation of the programs to show how the programs had failed. They all represented social experiments and we can ascertain if such an experiment has worked through the use of statistics. I wish to say something, however: Before any of these programs were ever started I would have been able to assert with absolute certainty that none of these three programs would work. How? Common sense, reason and knowledge of human nature.

I would have known that if the government starts supporting unwed mothers and their illegitimate children then women will start electing not to get married so as to get government support. Why? The work world can be rough. Finding jobs can be difficult. Working for a living, putting up with bosses, etc. is not pleasant. If the government is committing to supporting you, that is a kind of security of the best kind. It is better than a husband. The guarantees are better. So women will look at their available options as we all do and pick the best option. In addition to this, when you offer freebies everyone will get in line. As a consequence of all this my prediction would be for a massive amount of promiscuity in both men and women along with all of the consequences of all of that promiscuity in terms of social dysfunction and crime. It is a recipe for fostering personal irresponsibility, creating personal habits of irresponsibility.

In regard to the treatment of criminals I would not have believed that the ideas of psychological counseling and rehabilitation programs would work. I have no confidence at all in modern psychiatry and once a person acquires a criminal mindset I would think the chances of changing him would be small.

In regard to sex education in schools I would have said that that would certainly lead to rampant teenage sexual promiscuity and then to general societal promiscuity. The people who wanted sex education were the liberals and I suspect they knew what the end result would be and that result is what they really wanted. That is their preferred lifestyle. Sex education has been used by the homosexual community to desensitize children to the idea of homosexuality and get them to accept it and so they were perhaps the main group pushing it. It represents an implementation of their agenda.

I suspect that many people would say the same thing as I and at the time these programs were initiated there were probably many people who opposed them for the very reasons I have given.

Why is it that I (and other conservatives) could see these things and the Liberals could not? Answer: It has to do with the Liberal mindset and Liberal assumptions. People living under minds ruled by some ideology are living with shackled minds. Dogmatic systems carry implicit assumptions and ways of thinking. Wrong assumptions may block out from vision that which is obvious to a person of simple common sense. Dogma clouds and distorts vision. It thwarts intuition.

After so many years of obvious failure, why don’t the liberals admit they were wrong and change these programs and policies? Answer: No one ever is willing to admit they were wrong. It is human nature. Politicians will never admit they were wrong. They want to stay in office. Retaining their job is their highest priority. A politician admitting they were wrong would be a tactical mistake. He would lose credibility. It would cause a great loss in influence and power and probably cost him his job. A political party cannot change its narrative and admit it has been wrong. It would be a tactical error. So it must stick to a false narrative and keep its propaganda machine working to support it. So for the last 60 years our government has been paying out huge amounts of money each year for programs which not only don’t work but are actually socially destructive — thus creating great huge additional subsidiary costs arising from all of the crime, juvenile delinquency, etc. caused by the bad programs. This sort of thing is why our national debt is now at 33 trillion. Nothing gets fixed. Our schools are nonfunctional. Teacher’s labor unions prevent reform. We spend gigantic sums of money in ill-advised wars. Etc. Etc.

13 Sept 2023