Charles Murray, W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Human Accomplishment" has a very interesting view on the poverty that Hurricane Katrina underscored. While his ideas will certainly be dismissed out of hand by many in the establishment Left, at best, and labeled more hypocritical right-wing moralizing, at worst, I find his argument compelling and worthy of careful consideration. The title pretty much sums up his main point: The Hallmark of the Underclass- The poverty Katrina underscored is primarily moral, not material.

Here's the money paragraph:

Perhaps the programs now being proposed by the administration will help ordinary poor people whose socialization is just fine and need nothing more than a chance. It is comforting to think so, but past experience with similar programs does not give reason for optimism--it is hard to exaggerate how ineffectually they have been administered. In any case, poor people who are not part of the underclass seldom need help to get out of poverty. Despite the exceptions that get the newspaper ink, the statistical reality is that people who get into the American job market and stay there seldom remain poor unless they do something self-destructive. And behaving self-destructively is the hallmark of the underclass.

This is surely not an argument the advocates of the poor want to hear, let alone consider. They'd prefer to to seize upon arguments like the one Bill Bennett made last week because it allows them to call their detractors racist. Once so-designated, the argument need not really be considered. And that's precisely what any advocates want. The last thing poverty pimps wants is for their prostitutes to think.