Dr. Williams and Poverty

Dr. Walter Williams, today’s guest host on the Rush Limbaugh show while Rush is out playing golf for the weekend, is a smart man. He is a professor at George Mason University and is one of the most popular guest hosts on Rush’s show. Incidentally, he also grew up in the same housing project as Bill Cosby.

In the second hour of today’s program, his guest was Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent at National Public Radio and Fox News. Now, as you may have guessed by his position at NPR, he is not a conservative, but he is a very smart and rational person.

Juan Williams has recently published a book called Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movenents, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--And What We Can Do About It, talking about the situation of Blacks in America today. Since both of the Williams are Black, and the main point of this guest appearance was to talk about the new book, the conversation centered on that subject and brought up some very good points. Of course, being a conservative, a Rush listener, and a fan of Bill Cosby, very little of this was new to me. They did, however, repeat one of Mr. Cosby’s assertions that I thought was pure genius, even though it is basically common sense. (Common sense is apparently not so common to a lot of our population – Black or White.)

Four easy steps to get out of poverty:

1. Graduate high school.


2. Take a job. Any job.


3. Do not have children before you get married.


4. Get married and stay married.

Doesn’t sound terribly difficult, eh? The preceding is in no way specific to any race, creed, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or status as a veteran. (Did I miss anyone?) But as of the 2004 U.S. Census, 24.7% of Blacks are living under the poverty line, as opposed to 8.6% for Whites and 21.9% for Hispanics (an issue a little closer to the hearts of us in Colorado).

Later in the show the topic turned to the fact that we do not have the right to sell our internal organs in a capitalistic market and how this would greatly reduce the long running supply shortage. I happen to agree with Dr. Williams’ assertion that we should be allowed to sell our organs, but that’s another story.

In the spirit of rambling on way past where I should have stopped, I’ll leave you with Walter Williams’ Wisdom of the Month:

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."

-- Daniel Webster