Preserving the family

[jafl]

For the most part New Orleans is a welfare city. The government has been given the role of the father and the proper family structure is absent due to divorce and illegitimacy.

Did the absence of functional families contribute to New Orleans’ inability to properly prepare for and recover from Katrina? If people do not function within family groups because these groups are dysfunctional or absent altogether, can they function as productive members of larger groups (neighborhood, church, school) and society as a whole (city, state, country)?

Didn’t Katrina simply exacerbate the social pathologies (crime, sloth, selfishness) that had already been put in motion by the breakdown of the family? Should maintaining the proper family structure be the first and foremost preparation for any kind of emergency or disaster? To what extent should the government be involved in preserving families?

[Fn/Form]

Originally Posted by jafl

For the most part New Orleans is a welfare city. The government has been given the role of the father and the proper family structure is absent due to divorce and illegitimacy.

Did the absence of functional families contribute to New Orleans’ inability to properly prepare for and recover from Katrina? If people do not function within family groups because these groups are dysfunctional or absent altogether, can they function as productive members of larger groups (neighborhood, church, school) and society as a whole (city, state, country)?

Absence of personal responsibility by citizens (families or not, doesn't matter) allowed all kinds of shysters and idiots to take the reins of the city. The rest is history.

As far as preparedness... many prepared like they should have. They left. It is said that 80-90% left the city. The remaining 10-20% cannot be said to represent the city in whole or part.

As far as recovery... there will always be a need to develop a port city, but how far people will go to develop N.O. is much more complex than the "family" theory. Rooting up again from what's become job- and home-away-from-home, reluctance to commit so much personally/Federally to an unstable geographical region, reluctance to start all over after coming back, etc.

Originally Posted by jafl

Didn’t Katrina simply exacerbate the social pathologies (crime, sloth, selfishness) that had already been put in motion by the breakdown of the family? Should maintaining the proper family structure be the first and foremost preparation for any kind of emergency or disaster? To what extent should the government be involved in preserving families?

Again, most people left before the storm, and what was left behind was a bunch of riff raff devoid of any social control. So they let go... law of the jungle.

Government has no friggin business "preserving families" or legislating anything more than basic morality. To "preserve" or legislate more than that is hurtling down the slippy slope to socialism and a sure sign that the canary in the coal mine is dying.

Family structure is a symptom of what's going well, not a goal or an end-all.

If the people cannot preserve their self (and consequently, the family), it is time for the country to crumble and fall. And it will fall, no matter the artificial intervention of the state. It is only a matter of taking a direct route or a long, scenic route to the same end.

[jafl]

Originally Posted by Fn/Form

As far as preparedness... many prepared like they should have. They left. It is said that 80-90% left the city. The remaining 10-20% cannot be said to represent the city in whole or part.

Hurricane Katrina: The Race and Class Debate - Monthly Review

Weren’t most of the people that did not evacuate New Orleans poor, and aren’t divorce and illegitimacy the prime factors in determining whether someone is poor or not?

Your family structure determines a great deal about your income and property, and how much income and property you have will determine how well you can face natural disaster.

As far as recovery... there will always be a need to develop a port city, but how far people will go to develop N.O. is much more complex than the "family" theory. Rooting up again from what's become job- and home-away-from-home, reluctance to commit so much personally/Federally to an unstable geographical region, reluctance to start all over after coming back, etc.

How many welfare recipients who left New Orleans are still welfare recipients wherever they are living now?

Again, most people left before the storm, and what was left behind was a bunch of riff raff devoid of any social control. So they let go... law of the jungle.

If only the riff raff remained and this made up 20% of New Orleans’ population, this figure speaks volumes about American society.

Government has no friggin business "preserving families" or legislating anything more than basic morality.

What do you consider to be basic morality? If a woman produces a bastard child that will drain society’s resources, does society/government have any right to legislate against the woman’s behavior?

If the people cannot preserve their self (and consequently, the family), it is time for the country to crumble and fall.

Which it is doing at an ever more rapid pace. Statistics published a few months ago show that 40% of all children born in the U.S. in 2008 were illegitimate.

[The_Blob]

How about mandatory periodic (quarterly?) drug testing to receive benefits? It's not a cure-all, but IMO it couldn't hurt... of course WHAT exactly to do with/for/to the person after a positive result? idk... I'm NOT without compassion, but there does come a time when personal responsibility trumps circumstance-of-birth.

When I worked on a govt. job site there were 'random' (yeah, right ) drug tests... my name was on the list 'randomly' every time not that I was worried, and I did get PAID for the time, but it did feel a bit like persecution.

[jafl]

Originally Posted by The_Blob

How about mandatory periodic (quarterly?) drug testing to receive benefits?

Quarterly? Monthly at least and this would include every person in the recipient’s household over the age of 10. A positive test for any member of the household would result to immediate and total loss of all benefits paid for by the taxpayers for every member of the household- including AFDC, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, school lunches, public K-12 school and college financial aid.

Of course we’d stop a lot of welfare simply by stopping illegitimacy. To this end I would require any person applying for benefits on behalf of any person under the age of 25 to document the identify of that person’s father and then show either that child support is up to date or the father is in jail or has been castrated.

But then the drastic measures that I propose wouldn’t be necessary if society didn’t condone illegitimacy and no-fault divorce.

[Fn/Form]

Originally Posted by jafl

Weren’t most of the people that did not evacuate New Orleans poor, and aren’t divorce and illegitimacy the prime factors in determining whether someone is poor or not?

Your family structure determines a great deal about your income and property, and how much income and property you have will determine how well you can face natural disaster.

The prime factor is personal responsibility. Divorce, single mothers, etc. are often a consequence of lack of personal responsibility, not the other way around.

I do agree that a positive family structure helps with personal responsibility, but you're lumping a whole lot of people into a generalization... not a safe assumption.

Originally Posted by jafl

How many welfare recipients who left New Orleans are still welfare recipients wherever they are living now?

If only the riff raff remained and this made up 20% of New Orleans’ population, this figure speaks volumes about American society.

Probably most of them.

New Orleans is almost unique in its history, demographic, and personality, and you absolutely cannot paint the entire U.S. with the same, broad brush. If you knew the town, you'd know your idea is laughable.

Originally Posted by jafl

What do you consider to be basic morality? If a woman produces a bastard child that will drain society’s resources, does society/government have any right to legislate against the woman’s behavior?

Which it is doing at an ever more rapid pace. Statistics published a few months ago show that 40% of all children born in the U.S. in 2008 were illegitimate.

IMO, basic morality is mostly summed in the widely-accepted, common laws of our country. The Constitution, criminal law, health and safety codes, etc. I may not agree with every single law, but most of it I do. I GUARANTEE YOU, IF EVERYONE LIVED BY THESE BASIC LAWS WE COULD ALL GET ALONG. Married or not. But even "good" people pick and choose which laws they obey at which times... "family" people and "bastard" people alike.

Society/government only prolongs the misery if they try to step in and legislate more than that. They are treating the SYMPTOMS, and NOT THE DISEASE. The disease must be treated at the personal level, a personal decision to be responsible for their self; committed to understanding society and undertaking their part in it--not a parasite of it. It doesn't matter if your parents were married, divorced, never knew each other, or whatever. Personal responsibility is the key issue. On the whole, stable families and societies would follow.

[jafl]

Originally Posted by Fn/Form

The prime factor is personal responsibility. Divorce, single mothers, etc. are often a consequence of lack of personal responsibility, not the other way around.

Then explain how and why the U.S. has gotten progressively worse (crime, drugs, bad schools) since no-fault divorce became the law of the land. Human beings will not restrain themselves so for society’s sake they must be restrained by society, religion and law. Society no longer cares, religion has been regulated into impotence and the law actively promotes the breakdown of the family.

I do agree that a positive family structure helps with personal responsibility, but you're lumping a whole lot of people into a generalization... not a safe assumption.

How so? I am merely explaining the situation as I see it. A 40% illegitimacy rate fully proves the accuracy of my assumption. Society no longer upholds the family and the family has dissolved.

New Orleans is almost unique in its history, demographic, and personality, and you absolutely cannot paint the entire U.S. with the same, broad brush. If you knew the town, you'd know your idea is laughable.

If the 20% of the population that didn’t look out for themselves is taken as being impoverished, then maybe NO is unique- few places in the U.S. have a 20% poverty rate. But that is not my point. New Orleans amply demonstrates the connection between the dissolution of the family and poverty. This connection is not NO-dependent. It exists everywhere. NO simply concentrates it like a giant centrifuge.

IMO, basic morality is mostly summed in the widely-accepted, common laws of our country. The Constitution, criminal law, health and safety codes, etc.

That doesn’t tell me anything. What about abortion and adultery and prostitution and Sodomy?

Society/government only prolongs the misery if they try to step in and legislate more than that. They are treating the SYMPTOMS, and NOT THE DISEASE.

On the contrary. Things like welfare actively promote immorality because people can sleep around, produce a bastard child and not have to take personal responsibility for their actions. Government action isn’t a symptom of societal decay; it is an active causative agent of that decay. My next door neighbor has 3 children by 3 different men- only one of which she was married to (the second of which had a wife in another state and the third is an old man who was seeking a VA disability which his bastard child would be entitled too long after he is dead). If she wasn’t getting welfare for the first two, I doubt that she would have slept around to get the third.

The disease must be treated at the personal level, a personal decision to be responsible for their self; committed to understanding society and undertaking their part in it--not a parasite of it.

Society has no right to demand that the right decision is made at the personal level? You cannot propose personal responsibility as the panacea for societal decay and then allow society no way to make people be personally responsible.

[Herbalpagan]

I do not think that divorce, illigitimate birth, race or socio economic back ground has anything to do with what a person becomes. There are many instances of people over coming these issues.
It is lack of personal responsibility that chooses the results. Granted, envoronment has a lot to do with how you feel about personal responsibility.
The government creating a "welfare" nation and requiring NO personal responsibility is what has created the problem.
I am not without compassion, and anyone can get down and out in rough times, but to offer onyl a hand out continuously and no other choice or to not demand a change, is only making slaves/addicts of people in this situation. The old adage is "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he feeds himself for a life time" is very true in this case. Those people in NO new that a hurricane was coming and could have left to an out of town shelter. They chose to take a chance and not go. Those people, when transfered to another situation could have found jobs in the new location, taken up offers of education and a new life. They chose not to. Why, because it was so much easier to accept a hand out. When you create a generation of lazy people, it takes a generation to turn that around.
I do not feel badly for these people in this day and age...they have free access to media to know that there are other ways of life. Most have access to free education to change their situation.
In almost every community accross the nation, there are "programs" to help young unwed mothers make other choices. They choose not to take advantage of this. For poor people, there is abortion or adoption for free...they choose to take the easy way out. The government has supported these decisions and now there is a generation of welfare addicts. But they are addicts thru personal choice, not because of race or illegitamacy. JMO

[The_Blob]

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families... How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the sacred obligations of morality if, from their earliest infancy, they learn their mothers live in habitual infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant infidelity to their mothers?"

John Adams

[jafl]

Originally Posted by Herbalpagan

I do not think that divorce, illigitimate birth, race or socio economic back ground has anything to do with what a person becomes.

The effects of these things on people’s lives have been documented.

Poverty and the Single Parent - Associated Content

In 2003 27.5% of the children in the U.S. lived with an unwed parent. 83.5% of these unwed parents were mothers. 42.3% of the children being raised by an unwed mother were living in poverty.

The Effect of Marriage on Child Poverty

When the first war on poverty program took effect in 1965 20.7% of America’s children were living in poverty. By 1996 that figure was still 19.8%.

In 1960 only 12% of American children lived with an unwed parent.

Only 8.2% of the children who live with both parents live in poverty. 35.2% of children who live with an unwed parent live in poverty.

Juvenile Delinquency and Family Structure

“The least amount of communication and structure the family provides, the more likely the child will engage in delinquent activities.”

“Children who are rejected by their parents, who grow up in homes with considerable conflict, or who are inadequately supervised are at the greatest risk of becoming delinquent.”

Children of divorce: rapists and other criminals

“All but three of 23 recent studies found some family structure effect on
crime or delinquency.”

“A study using Add-Health data found that even after controlling for race, parents' education, and income, adolescents in single-parent families were almost two times more likely to have pulled a knife or a gun on someone in the past year.”

“A study that looked at the relation between divorce rates and out-of-wedlock birthrates and violent crime between 1973 and 1995 found that nearly 90% of the change in violent crime rates can be accounted for by the change in percentages of out-of-wedlock births. (Mackey and Coney 2000, p. 352)

“A study that looked at crime in rural counties in four states concluded, ‘[A]n increase of 13% in female-headed households would produce a doubling
of the offense rate.’ (Osgood and Chambers 2000, p. 103)”.

Other studies indicate that 60% of rapists came from unwed mother homes. 70% of “violent” people likewise came from unwed mother homes.

Boys who live in a single-parent home are twice as likely to end up in jail as boys who live with both parents even when other factors (race, education, income etcetera) are taken into consideration.

Another study shows that 53% of the inmates in state prison grew up in single parent homes. And another study shows that the juvenile delinquency rate in a neighborhood is directly proportional to the number of single-mother households that are in that neighborhood.

Don’t tell me that divorce and illegitimacy have no effect.