The most troubling aspect of social policy towards the poor in late 20th century America is or how much it costs, but what it has bought.

The government can back up its tastes and beliefs with the police power. That is why it cannot be permitted tastes and beliefs. Most emphatically, it cannot be permitted to define one group as being privileged over another group of people. It was wrong in the days of Jim Crow; it is wrong in the days of affirmative action.

The most troubling aspect of social policy towards the poor in late 20th century America is or how much it costs, but what it has bought.

What a racially segregated system once taught the young black about living with his inferiority is now taught by a benevolent social welfare system. The difference was that in an earlier age a black parent could fight the competing influences.

Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time - more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else.

Give people plenty and security, and they will fall into spiritual torpor.

Educational romanticism asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top.