World of Shareware - Software Farm 2/wosw_2.zip/wosw_2/GENERAL/MURPHYBR.ZIP/MURPHYBR.TXT

Text File | 1992-06-13 | 17KB | 331 lines

             PREPARED REMARKS BY THE VICE PRESIDENT
                 COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA
                  May 19, 1992, 12:00 p.m. PDT
                    San Francisco, California


     As you may know, I've just returned from a week-long trip to
Japan.  I was there to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the
reversion of Okinawa to Japan by the United States, an act that has
made a lasting impression on the Japanese.

     While I was there, Japan announced its commitment to join with
the United States in assisting Eastern and Central Europe with a
400 million dollar aid package.  We also announced a manufacturing
technology initiative that will allow American engineers to gain
experience working in Japanese businesses.

     Japan and the United States are allies and partners.  Though
we have our differences, especially in the area of trade, our two
countries -- with 40 percent of the world's GNP -- are committed to
a global partnership in behalf of peace and economic growth.

     But in the midst of all of these discussions of international
affairs, I was asked many times in Japan about the recent events in
Los Angeles.  From the perspective of many Japanese, the ethnic
diversity of our culture is a weakness compared to their homogenous
society.  I begged to differ with my hosts.  I explained that our
diversity is our strength.  And I explained that the immigrants who
come to our shores have made, and continue to make, vast contri-
butions to our culture and our economy.

     It is wrong to imply that the Los Angeles riots were an
inevitable outcome of our diversified society.  But the question
that I tried to answer in Japan is one that needs answering here:
What happened?  Why?  And how do we prevent it in the future?

     One response has been predictable:  Instead of denouncing
wrongdoing, some have shown tolerance for rioters; some have
enjoyed saying "I told you so;" and some have simply made excuses
for what happened.  All of this has been accompanied by pleas for
more money.

     I'll readily accept that we need to understand what happened.
But I reject the idea we should tolerate or excuse it.

     When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the
riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and
simple:  Who is to blame for the riots?  The rioters are to blame.
Who is to blame for the killings?  The killers are to blame.  Yes,
I can understand how people were shocked and outraged by the
verdict in the Rodney King trial.  But there is simply no excuse
for the mayhem that followed.  To apologize or in any way to excuse
what happened is wrong.  It is a betrayal of all those people
equally outraged and equally disadvantaged who did not loot and did
not riot -- and who were in many cases victims of the rioters.  No
matter how much you may disagree with the verdict, the riots were
wrong.  And if we as a society don't condemn what is wrong, how can
we teach our children what is right?

     But after condemning the riots, we do need to try to under-
stand the underlying situation.

     In a nutshell:  I believe the lawless social anarchy which we
saw is directly related to the breakdown of family structure,
personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our
society.  For the poor, the situation is compounded by a welfare
ethos that impedes individual efforts to move ahead in society and
hampers their ability to take advantage of the opportunities
America offers.

     If we don't succeed in addressing these fundamental problems,
and in restoring basic values, any attempt to fix what's broken
will fail.  But one reason I believe we won't fail is that we have
come so far in the last 25 years.

     There is no question that this country has had a terrible
problem with race and racism.  The evil of slavery has left a long
legacy.  But we have faced racism squarely, and we have made
progress in the past quarter century.  The landmark civil rights
bills of the 1960's removed legal barriers to allow full participa-
tion by blacks in the economic, social, and political life of the
nation.  By any measure the America of 1992 is more egalitarian,
more integrated and offers more opportunities to black Americans --
and all other minority group members -- than the America of 1964.
There is more to be done.  But I think that all of us can be proud
of our progress.

     And let's be specific about one aspect of this progress:  This
country now has a black middle class that barely existed a quarter
century ago.  Since 1967 the median income of black two parent
families has risen by 60 percent in real terms.  The number of
black college graduates has skyrocketed.  Black men and women have
achieved real political power -- black mayors head 48 of our
largest cities, including Los Angeles.  These are achievements.

     But as we all know, there is another side to that bright
landscape.  During this period of progress, we have also developed
a culture of poverty -- some call it an underclass -- that is far
more violent and harder to escape than it was a generation ago.

     The poor you always have with you, Scripture tells us.  And in
America we have always had poor people.  But in this dynamic,
prosperous nation, poverty has traditionally been a stage through
which people pass on their way to joining the great middle class.
And if one generation didn't get very far up the ladder -- their
ambitions, better-educated children would.

     But the underclass seems to be a new phenomenon.  It is a
group whose members are dependent on welfare for very long
stretches, and whose men are often drawn into lives of crime.
There is far too little upward mobility, because the underclass is
disconnected from the rules of American society.  And these
problems have, unfortunately, been particularly acute for Black
Americans.

     Let me share with you a few statistics on the difference
between black poverty in particular in the 1960's and now.

             In 1967, 68% of black families were headed by married
          couples.  In 1991, only 48% of black families were headed
          by both a husband and wife.

             In 1965 the illegitimacy rate among black families was
          28%.  In 1989, 65% -- two thirds -- of all black children
          were born to never-married mothers.

             In 1951, 9.2% of black youth between 16-19 were un-
          employed.  In 1965, it was 23%.  In 1980 it was 35%.  By
          1989, the number had declined slightly, but was still
          32%.

             The leading cause of death of young black males today is
          homicide.

     It would be overly simplistic to blame this social breakdown
on the programs of the Great Society alone.  It would be absolutely
wrong to blame it on the growth and success most Americans enjoyed
during the 1980's.  Rather, we are in large measure reaping the
whirlwind of decades of changes in social mores.

     I was born in 1947, so I'm considered one of those "Baby
Boomers" we keep reading about.  But let's look at one unfortunate
legacy of the "Boomer" generation.  When we were young, it was
fashionable to declare war against traditional values.  Indulgence
and self-gratification seemed to have no consequences.  Many of our
generation glamorized casual sex and drug use, evaded respons-
ibility and trashed authority.  Today the "Boomers" are middle-aged
and middle class.  The responsibility of having families has helped
many recover traditional values.  And, of course, the great
majority of those in the middle class survived the turbulent legacy
of the 60's and 70's.  But many of the poor, with less to fall back
on, did not.

     The intergenerational poverty that troubles us so much today
is predominantly a poverty of values.  Our inner cities are filled
with children having children; with people who have not been able
to take advantage of educational opportunities; with people who are
dependent on drugs or the narcotic of welfare.  To be sure, many
people in the ghettos struggle very hard against these tides -- and
sometimes win.  but too many feel they have no hope and nothing to
lose.  This poverty is, again, fundamentally a poverty of values.

     Unless we change the basic rules of society in our inner
cities, we cannot expect anything else to change.  We will simply
get more of what we saw three weeks ago.  New thinking, new ideas,
new strategies are needed.

     For the government, transforming underclass culture means that
our policies and programs must create a different incentive system.
Our policies must be premised on, and must reinforce, values such
as:  family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility.

     I think we can all agree that government's first obligation is
to maintain order.  We are a nation of laws, not looting.  It has
become clear that the riots were fueled by the vicious gangs that
terrorize the inner cities.  We are committed to breaking those
gangs and restoring law and order.  As James Q. Wilson has written,
"Programs of economic restructuring will not work so long as gangs
control the streets."

     Some people say "law and order," are code words.  Well, they
are code words.  Code words for safety, getting control of the
streets, and freedom from fear.  And let's not forget that, in
1990, 84 percent of the crimes committed by blacks were committed
against blacks.

     We are for law and order.  If a single mother raising her
children in the ghetto has to worry about drive-by shootings, drug
deals, or whether her children will join gangs and die violently,
her difficult task becomes impossible.  We're for law and order
because we can't expect children to learn in dangerous schools.
We're for law and order because if property isn't protected, who
will build businesses?

     As one step on behalf of law and order -- and on behalf of
opportunity as well -- the President has initiated the "Weed and
Seed" program -- to "weed out" criminals and "seed" neighborhoods
with programs that address root causes of crime.  And we have
encouraged community-based policing, which gets the police on the
street so they interact with civilians.

     Safety is absolutely necessary.  But it's not sufficient.  Our
urban strategy is to empower the poor by giving them control over
their lives.  To do that, our urban agenda includes:

             Fully funding the Home-ownership and Opportunity for
          People Everywhere program.  HOPE -- as we call it -- will
          help public housing residents become home-owners.
          Subsidized housing all too often merely made rich
          investors richer.  Home ownership will give the poor a
          stake in their neighborhoods, and a chance to build
          equity.

             Creating enterprise zones by slashing taxes in targeted
          areas, including a zero capital gains tax, to spur
          entrepreneurship, economic development, and job creation
          in inner cities.

             Instituting our education strategy, AMERICA 2000, to
          raise academic standards and to give the poor the same
          choices about how and where to educate their children
          that rich people have.

             Promoting welfare reform to remove the penalties for
          marriage, create incentives for saving, and give com-
          munities greater control over how the programs are
          administered.

     These programs are empowerment programs.  They are based on
the same principles as the Job Training Partnership Act, which
aimed to help disadvantaged young people and dislocated workers to
develop their skills to give them an opportunity to get ahead.
Empowering the poor will strengthen families.  And right now, the
failure of our families is hurting America deeply.  When families
fail, society fails.  The anarchy and lack of structure in our
inner cities are testament to how quickly civilization falls apart
when the family foundation cracks.  Children need love and
discipline.  They need mothers and fathers.  A welfare check is not
a husband.  The state is not a father.  It is from parents that
children learn how to behave in society; it is from parents above
all that children come to understand values and themselves as men
and women, mothers and fathers.

     And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty,
we should know this:  marriage is probably the best anti-poverty
program of all.  Among families headed by married couples today,
there is a poverty rate of 5.7 percent.  But 33.4 percent of
families headed by a single mother are in poverty today.

     Nature abhors a vacuum.  Where there are no mature, respon-
sible men around to teach boys how to be good men, gangs serve in
their place.  In fact, gangs have become a surrogate family for
much of a generation of inner-city boys.  I recently visited with
some former gang members in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  In a private
meeting, they told me why they had joined gangs.  These teenage
boys said that gangs gave them a sense of security.  They made them
feel wanted and useful.  They got support from their friends.  And,
they said, "It was just like having a family."  "like family" --
unfortunately, that says it all.

     The system perpetuates itself as these young men father
children whom they have no intention of caring for, by women whose
welfare checks support them.  Teenage girls, mired in the same
hopelessness, lack sufficient motive to say no to this trap.

     Answers to our problems won't be easy.

     We can start by dismantling a welfare system that encourages
dependency and subsidizes broken families.  We can attach con-
ditions -- such as school attendance, or work -- to welfare.  We
can limit the time a recipient gets benefits.  We can stop
penalizing marriage for welfare mothers.  We can enforce child
support payments.

     Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires
cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions.  Bearing
babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong.  Failing to support
children one has fathered is wrong.  We must be unequivocal about
this.

     It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown --
a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly
paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers by
bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle
choice."

     I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but
we need to do it.  Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood,
network Tv, the national newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think
that most of us in this room know that some things are good, and
other things are wrong.  Now it's time to make the discussion
public.

     It's time to talk again about family, hard work, integrity,
and personal responsibility.  We cannot be embarrassed out of our
belief that two parents, married to each other, are better in most
cases for children than one.  That honest work is better than hand-
outs -- or crime.  That we are out brothers' keepers.  That it's
worth making an effort, even when the rewards aren't immediate.

     So I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to
our Judeo-Christian values -- in our churches and synagogues, our
civic organizations and our schools.  We are, as our children
recite each morning, "one nation under God."  That's a useful
framework for acknowledging a duty and an authority higher than our
own pleasures and personal ambitions.

     If we lived more thoroughly by these values, we would live in
a better society.  For the poor, renewing these values will give
people the strength to help themselves by acquiring the tools to
achieve self-sufficiency, a good education, job training, and
property.  Then they will move from permanent dependence to
dignified independence.

     Shelby Steele, in his great book, The Content of our Charac-
ter, writes, "Personal responsibility is the brick and mortar of
power.  The responsible person knows that the quality of his life
is something that he will have to make inside the limits of his
fate...The quality of his life will pretty much reflect his
efforts."

     I believe that the Bush Administration's empowerment agenda
will help the poor gain that power, by creating opportunity, and
letting people make the choices that free citizens must make.

     Though our hearts have been pained by the events in Los
Angeles, we should take this tragedy as an opportunity for self-
examination and progress.  So let the national debate roar on.  I,
for one, will join it.  The president will lead it.  The American
people will participate in it.  And as a result, we will become an
even stronger nation.