Mr Blow of the NYTimes tells us how it is -- or should be, or something

Op-Ed columnist Charles M. Blow of the NYTimes inadvertently opens Pandora's Box with this his column "Empire at the End of Decadence". Blow tells us we are in decline as a country compared to other advanced countries because we rank poorly in nine sundry measurable categories: math scores, income inequality, democracy, well-being, prison population, life expectancy, level of democracy, science scores, and levels of unemployment.  He offers no reasons for this state of decadence we have fallen into but he does take a swipe at Republicans for trying to reign in our out-of-control federal budget alleging the cuts would "devastate" the poor and most vulnerable.  I guess the intent of his column is to tell us the United States is far from an exceptional country and that we really ought to shape up.  Again, no suggestions how to do this.

Let's open this Pandora's Box of Blow's and task the question, how did  the US earn the rating of
"worst of the worst" compared to other advanced countries in the categories of income inequality, science and math scores, prison population, and level of unemployment? We can point to the condition of the white, African-American and hispanic underclass in our country as the primary cause of those bad ratings.  We know conclusively that children perform better in school and have less disciplinary problems than when they come from two parent families.  And yet, 70 percent of all black children now are born out of wedlock and are raised in single parent families. Clearly we can solve several of those poor ratings categories by getting at the root causes of this shameful statistic alone.  Of course pointing out the statistic of single parent households by race brings down the wrath of race hustlers and victim mongers the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who find it more rewarding financially not to solve this black underperforming problem. The Pigford class action settlement suit by the government on over 100,000 black farmers out of a total of at most 33,000 black farmers in all the land is an example of how profitable the race hustling business can be.   And as for producing a well documented study of the destruction of the black family after the passage of LBJ's Great Society legislation in the 60's, Senator Moynihan was pilloried,  blasphemed and shunned as a racist despite the fact he was a New Dealer steeped in the liberal tradition.

Black apologists blame racism dating back to slavery for the poor performance of their own underclass.  But this excuse just doesn't hold water when one considers the economic success enjoyed by Asians, specifically the Chinese who came to the country in the late 19th century as de facto slaves working for peanuts building the railroad system throughout the United States.  Or the Vietnamese who came to this country after their abandonment in the 1960's by the United States Congress and who hrough hard work and discipline found a way to succeed brilliantly in our open and welcoming society.  Or the Irish,  or the Jews who faced rejection in the workplace, in housing and in all the venues of "polite" society.  None of these people had the benefit, or curse, depending on one's point of view, of affirmative action, and other government programs that give preferential treatment to one class over another for the reason of perceived wrongs by society in the past.

Fortunately the prognosis for the blacks is quite encouraging when one looks at the success of African-Americans in the entertainment and sports fields.  There we see a disproportionate number of blacks compared to other races, making it to the top of those performance driven professions.  We can be sure that without the artificial crutches, bailouts and incentive-sapping government programs blacks can compete and succeed in fields that require hard work and discipline.  The "something for nothing" work ethic usually results in mostly failure.  And looking for excuses makes it easy to put off getting down to work.  What's more improvement of the performance of blacks would probably pu us at the very top of the ratings in those categories where we are now "worst of the worst".