by Nomad
This quote by Herman Melville was the impetus for this post about two well-known conservatives, Paul Ryan and Bill Bennett. Whenever you hear two elitist white guys pontificating about what's wrong with the "inner-city" culture, it's hard not catch the faint scent of racism.
On March 12 of this year, Republican Paul Ryan was on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show to share his brand of wisdom about poverty in the US. He was quoted as saying:
"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning to value the culture of work, so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."
The whole conversation was absurd on so many levels even Melville could not have held back a chuckle. Of course, the thought that unemployment is a just moral/culture failure no doubt provides a welcome sense of superiority to some of the more privileged among us.
