Volume 42, Number 9 · May 25, 1995
Hanging Out
By Michael Massing
Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men
by Elliot Liebow
Little, Brown, 260 pp., $10.95 (paper)
Almost daily, Newt Gingrich claims that one book or another has inspired his campaign against government welfare, but the most reliable guide to what is happening in Washington now is Charles Murray's Losing Ground, published in 1984. While Murray's more recent The Bell Curve has attracted much attention, his earlier book has had far more practical impact. Murray's argument—that welfare programs helped to create the underclass and so should, on the whole, be abolished—seemed dangerously radical at the time; today, it is hard to find a politician of either party who would disagree with it. The movement for 'welfare reform' (a sanitized phrase that Orwell would have appreciated) can be traced back in no small part to Murray's book. Ever since it appeared, liberals have been on the intellectual defensive.
Review, 4084 words
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