Involvement With Government Aid Programs
He worked for several government agencies, traveled in the West, and observed the effects of government projects. Although he initially supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, he gradually became skeptical of government attempts to construct housing, support the arts, etc. Long before Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs, Banfield had decided that government aid to the poor would make the givers of aid feel virtuous, but wouldn’t improve the lives of the receivers of aid. He argued that "the real reason for the passage" of the legislation establishing the National Endowment for the Arts "was, and is, to benefit . . . the culture industry of New York City."
Banfield's views were controversial, and The Unheavenly City sparked much debate. According to MacInnes, Banfield:
- made a simple and well-documented case that the problems played out in ghetto neighborhoods were a consequence of concentrated lower-class populations. Race was not the critical issue, he said. The black poor, Banfield suggested, were no different from other (white) lower-class Americans: they had no fondness for work, no strong family ties, an easy acceptance of criminal behavior, no brief for schooling, and no future perspective. Banfield argued that even well-pruned government programs could not undo the harm caused by class differences. For this sin, Banfield was effectively banished from one campus after another, his books vandalized, his lectures shouted down, and his sponsors threatened.
His Harvard colleagues described him as “an individual with a strong and distinctive character that impressed itself on all who met him,” and as a man who enjoyed “the delights of humor, long meals, and friendly company." Banfield had "a reputation as a brilliant maverick", and his "books and articles had a sharp contrarian edge. He was a critic of almost every mainstream liberal idea in domestic policy, especially the use of Federal aid to help relieve urban poverty."
Banfield taught many conservative scholars, including James Q. Wilson and Thomas Sowell. He also taught Christopher DeMuth and Bruce Kovner, leading figures at the conservative think-tank, American Enterprise Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961.
Read more about this topic: Edward C. Banfield
Famous quotes containing the words involvement, government, aid and/or programs:
“Many people now believe that if fathers are more involved in raising children than they were, children and sons in particular will learn that men can be warm and supportive of others as well as be high achievers. Thus, fathers’ involvement may be beneficial not because it will help support traditional male roles, but because it will help break them down.”
—Joseph H. Pleck (20th century)
“I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy adult human being can really care whether so-and-so does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person or not.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“[The Republicans] offer ... a detailed agenda for national renewal.... [On] reducing illegitimacy ... the state will use ... funds for programs to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, to promote adoption, to establish and operate children’s group homes, to establish and operate residential group homes for unwed mothers, or for any purpose the state deems appropriate. None of the taxpayer funds may be used for abortion services or abortion counseling.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)