Suddenly, there is great interest in the 1960s. Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) explained in a Fox News interview that Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) couldn’t bring the country together because she was still fighting the battles of the 60s. This week’s Newsweek cover story features the year 1968 as the year that made us who we are. Tom Brokaw has a book coming out about the voices of the 60s. Obviously, the “Boomers” aren’t going to leave the scene quietly.
Lots of folks have lots to say about the people and the events of the “Age of Aquarius” — the student occupation of administration buildings on campuses across the nation, the violent demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, the bloody race riots and tragic assassinations. The focus, though, is primarily on the people and the events of that turbulent period of American history. Granted, the people and the events were unprecedented, and the era was the very definition of cultural breakdown, but the gory accounts generally don’t include the federal policies that were instituted during that era that continue to contribute to our national woes.
Two 1960s policy “innovations” were especially destructive. The Flemming Rule (1960) was named for Arthur Flemming, then head of the Department of Health and Human Services, who issued an administrative ruling that states could not deny eligibility for income assistance through the AFDC program on the grounds that a home was “unsuitable” because the woman’s children were illegitimate. In 1968, the Supreme Court’s “Man-in-the-House” rule struck down the practice of states declaring a home unsuitable (i.e., an immoral environment) if there was a man in the house not married to the mother. Thus, out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation were legitimized. In very short order, the number on welfare tripled and child poverty climbed dramatically. Unbelievably, President Bill Clinton awarded Arthur Flemming his second Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to American society.
Innovation, though, does not constitute progress unless the benefits are greater than its costs — unless the intended consequences are larger than the unintended consequences. In our national history of trial and error, boom or bust, there are numerous economic and social policies that have ignored the realities of human nature with its propensities, flaws and limitations. James Madison, the father of the American Constitution, was mindful of the propensity of human nature to abuse power, and he deliberately designed a government with carefully drawn boundaries; the separation of powers between the branches of government provides essential checks and balances.
Liberals tend to ignore the need to constrain evil behavior; they see bad environmental influences as the source of evil, rather than acknowledging the existence of evil that needs to be constrained.
So what were the results of the Flemming Rule and the “Man-in-the-House” rule? These two rulings were significant features of the “War on Poverty.” Yet, the number of children living in poverty at the outset of the War on Poverty was only 13.8 percent; subsequently it climbed to a high of 22 percent before finally beginning to decline after the Welfare Reform of 1996 was enacted over the furious protests of liberals. The number of unmarried couples living together in the United States is 10 times larger today than in 1970. Many of these couples have children, despite the instability of these relationships, whose rate of the dissolution is many times higher than that of married couples. Female-headed households with related children in the United States have increased a whopping 250 percent since 1970. This is important for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the poverty rate of children living in mother-only families is five times that of children living in married couple families.
Since Welfare Reform in 1996, the welfare caseload has declined 66 percent, and the poverty rate of children in mother-only families has dropped dramatically. Policy counts!
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