History Is Written By The Economic Victors

Title: “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”

Author: Charles Murray

Rank: 15

Blurb: “The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk.”

Review: “Murray explains that white America has grown increasingly divided along class lines. There is a clear moral case being made here. The lower class is falling into illegitimacy, crime, and poverty while the upper class is excelling in education, career, and family. The main cause is simple: primarily, a devaluation of white middle class values brought on by increased intervention by the government. This intervention takes the form of welfare support, in which the government gives incentive for people to break apart families and avoid work. Meanwhile, the upper class is left alone to prosper in its highly technical fields.”

Featured Review by Niall Ferguson: “The key point is that the four great social trends of the past half-century — the decline of marriage, of the work ethic, of respect for the law and of religious observance — have affected [poor, uneducated] Fishtown much more than [wealthy, educated] Belmont. As a consequence, the traditional bonds of civil society have atrophied in Fishtown. And that, Murray concludes, is why people there are so very unhappy — and dysfunctional.”

Customers Also Bought: “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun” by Paul M. Barrett

Footnote: After thirty years of fucking over the poor, it’s about time somebody got around to blaming them.

Coming Apart [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]