Inner-City Problems

After all this time, Craig Haney still doesn’t get it (Column Left, March 3). By once again fixing the blame for the inner-city crisis on “heartless” government fiscal policies, Haney resurrects the same, tired old arguments that have been rejected everywhere in the world except the American academe. If the lack of job-training programs, neighborhood recreation centers, teen counselors and summer jobs programs are responsible for inner-city blight, how does Haney account for the fact that America’s cities were in much better shape before these “compassion” programs were even conceived of? Does Haney really believe Reagan to be the first “heartless” President in our history? Were Kennedy and Johnson the most heartless, since the era of inner-city violence began on their watch?

As it happens, the new Democrats are just starting to come around to the understanding that Republicans reached 13 years ago: that these problems have their root causes in cultural shifts that have been occurring over the past 40 years or so, and as such are probably not solvable by knee-jerk spending programs evolved by those who claim to be compassionate. What we further understand is that the very programs imposed by the “compassionate” to solve these problems are now a major contributing cause of the persistence of inner-city poverty, draining the self-esteem of those who become dependent upon them.

It is the destructive messages sent out by ideologues like Haney that frustrate the cultural corrections just now being formulated to overcome the complex problems of our inner cities. If Haney really wants to help keep youths out of jail, he should stop preaching the gospel of the discredited left, and encourage a return to the individual empowerment and personal responsibility that once made America great, a genuine national resource that has long been buried beneath tons of good intentions in the inner city.

DAN E. CHILDERS

Aliso Viejo