Writing at the Washington Free Beacon, contributing editor Matthew Continetti squares recent columns by Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks.
Krauthammer pushes a reformicon agenda that seeks solutions to problems that, he argues, are rooted in our government, rather than the actions of private citizens. Brooks, on the other hand, suggests that part of America’s problem comes from a broader swath, as Continetti summarizes: “Brooks cites the large numbers of Americans who report chronic loneliness, a surge in addiction, the rising number of children born to unmarried women, a decrease in religious affiliation, and a collapse of trust in others, in media, and in government.”
Continetti continues:
I don’t understand how our “superannuated, increasingly sclerotic 20th-century welfare state structures” are entirely to blame for the political, cultural, and social decomposition of America. And I am afraid decomposition is the word: Political, since the influence and strength and size of our parties is in decline as polarization widens. Cultural, because the “revolt of the public” and the explosion in content has revolutionized and balkanized the way Americans read the news and experience culture. Social, for the reasons [David] Brooks mentions but also for the rising salience of ethnicity and the conclusions drawn by Charles Murray in Coming Apart and by Robert Putnam in Our Kids. To be sure, decades ago Murray and others found connections between federal antipoverty programs and the perpetuation of the conditions those programs were meant to improve. These findings inspired the welfare reform act of 1996, a successful attempt to encourage work and initiative among the poor. And today, when one looks at the rampant abuse of Social Security Disability Insurance, one sees another badly designed program leading to perverse results. It needs to be fixed. But how far will reforming disability insurance get us? “Our problems,” after all, seem to go a lot further than men and women dropping out of the work force. Candidates for president in both parties this year, for example, have been shocked at the extent and toll of opioid and meth addiction. Did welfare state structures give us that? And if so, how? And wouldn’t any serious attempt to address the problem require more government involvement—at the very least more police to interdict the drugs and imprison the dealers? Another pressing issue is mental health. Does the welfare state drive young men insane? I think not. But I do think that here, as well, government will have to do more rather than less to treat the mentally ill and commit those that are a hazard to themselves and to others.
You can read the whole item here.
