The Dream and the Nightmare

a book by Myron Magnet

(our site's book review)

In looking at the 60s legacy to the underclass, Magnet says: “The emblem of this mystery, ubiquitous in big cities, is the panhandler begging outside McDonald’s, right under the Help Wanted sign.” He shows that the plight of the poor has been and is—in the past few decades—a cultural legacy, not an economic problem. And he implicates the culture’s liberal elites.

Help Wanted


"Work? Hell no—I've got food stamps!"

“This book’s central argument is that the Haves are implicated because over the last thirty years they radically remade American culture, turning it inside out and upside down to accomplish a cultural revolution whose most mangled victims turned out to be the Have-nots. This was the precise opposite of what was supposed to happen,” according to this book. And the poor were told that they were victims—not responsible for their fates. One of the sickest manifestations of this is when an ignorant liberal jury actually lets a criminal get off because s/he suffered a disadvantaged, neglectful or abusive childhood. See The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop-outs, Sob Stories, and Evasions of Responsibility.

The abuse excuse—the legal tactic in which defendants claim a personal history of abuse as an excuse

By legitimizing excuse making, and labeling offenders not responsible for their actions because their pasts were less than ideal, the liberal culture has finally taken the devastatingly wrong and immoral stance of absolving the underclass from responsibility for their actions. It’s the ultimate insult to not just the underclass, but the human species. How can the poor ever possibly learn anything, or do anything besides rob people and push drugs and abuse substances and get pregnant and act irresponsible when we deprive them of the natural consequences of their inappropriate actions?

How can the poor act any way but irresponsibly when we deprive them of the natural consequences of their inappropriate actions? (Here's a teen who didn't use birth control but has no desire to be a mother—so Medicaid that us taxpayers fund will pay her bills.)

He also says that the type of personal liberation many Haves sought weakened community and families, but it made the Haves feel moral, just and worthwhile, even though what they really were is misguided by erroneous liberal culture’s beliefs. Magnet says: “. . . opportunity is now open [for the underclass], and the great question is how many of the once-excluded will seize it, despite their scars. The culture of the Haves needs to tell them that they can do it—not that, because of past victimization, they cannot.”

Prison

The liberal media has convinced the illegal and immoral part of the underclass that they should be mad, and their crimes aren’t really crimes at all—they’re healthy rebellion. Of course, the jails are filled to the brim with people who the Haves have played this dirty trick on, and a whole generation of young black men are in prisons paying the price for buying into the foolishness of the liberal elite Haves. Listen to their rap songs and you'll soon be hearing antisocial bitching, antiwomen pseudo-macho cliches, excuses since they're victims, nasty hatred at people in general. They see themselves as too manly to work or treat women with respect, so when they're low on funds they turn to crime—which is somehow "manly"!

A whole generation of young black men are in prisons paying the price for buying into the foolishness of the liberal elites

Magnet advocates ceasing to perpetuate the welfare system and quota-based affirmative action, stopping treating criminals as justified rebels, dumping the idea of letting bums expropriate public spaces or letting wrongdoers live in public housing at public expense, and stopping Afrocentric education and political correctness obsessions in the schools. And stop social engineering—it’s a flop, so admit it. “The required solution is for the poor to take responsibility for themselves, not to be made dependent on programs and exempted from responsibility.”

Let's stopping treating criminals as justified rebels


Overpopulation causes many of Earth's other problems—it's a major contributor to war and environmental destruction

This book is certainly an antidote for the excesses of the bleeding-heart liberals, and it is correct to take them "behind the woodshed" for the aspects of these excesses and their ramifications as presented above. But the conservatives had their part in the matter as well: What about the deregulations that led to the many economic woes in 2008 and beyond? What about defunding many social programs when people need them most, almost guaranteeing crime? What about Bush starting a phoney Iraq War based on phoney WMD "evidence" just to insure oil supplies, which got fought mostly by the underclass and minorities, as if Bush were practicing a new type of "overpopulation control"? What about tax cuts for the rich, paid for by a suffering, overburdened middle class? There are plenty more examples.

Let's take the bleeding-heart liberals 'behind the woodshed' for screwing up the U.S.

But, since we're assessing blame, how about some for the deep state, a.k.a. the shadow government or the national security state, who've decided not only that they have the right to invade countries that aren't attacking the U.S, but also that war is good (big) business: "After 9/11, President Bush declared regime change to be official U.S. policy. He took this country to war to create regime change in Iraq. How does the president know which governments to overthrow? According to Bush’s criteria, a government must:

1. build or sell weapons of mass destruction
2. violate U.N. resolutions
3. threaten, invade, or dominate its neighbors
4. exploit many of its own poorest citizens
5. erode the civil liberties or human rights of its people
6. fail to live up to democratic ideals

The president [Dubya], of course, was thinking of countries like Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Syria. But look at the list more carefully. Sound familiar? The criteria that call for regime change apply to the American government itself. Americans live under a regime that is threatening to dominate not just its neighbors but the world as a whole." (Source: Regime Change Begins at Home: Freeing America from Corporate Rule.) If, as George Dubya Bush says, these are the correct criteria for regime change, doesn't that mean the U.S. needs regime change now? And that is precisely the author's (Charles Derber) insightful point! See The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Speaking of dreams and nightmares:

The U.S. shadow government's dream of infinite power is the world's nightmare, and U.S. citizens need to confront our warmongering leaders, saying YOUR DREAM IS OUR NIGHTMARE!


9/11 terrorist attack