Word: moynihanized
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Perhaps this is not entirely unfair: a government program should not be automatically considered worthwhile simply because its actual harmfulness cannot be proved. But Moynihan's insistence that government programs be able to justify themselves with hard scientific data may prove to be even less helpful than the less rigorous approach of the Office for Economic Opportunity...
Perhaps a more telling criticism to be made of the community action programs is not that they created too much social conflict, but that they were intrinsically weak because they were contrived by the very power structure which they tried to confront. Moynihan recognizes this fact, although for theoretical reasons he does not emphasize it. The ability of the federal government to intervene in local politics is considerable, but it is not unlimited. When the OEO-sponsored community action groups began to make too much trouble for the city halls and the state houses, word quickly got back to Washington...
...EMERGES in this book, Moynihan's basic outlook is one of contentment. Of course he is aware, as everyone is, that America still has a lot of problems. But like most contemporary American social theorists, Moynihan views America's troubles as residual, as the unfinished business of a society which has on the whole found satisfactory answers for its problems. He deplores the Vietnam war as a tragic waste of resources, but sees no particular link between wasteful military expenditures and Keynesian economic planning, which he praises as the basis of "the singularly successful political economy...
...optimistic a view may yet prove justified, but it doesn't seem likely. If the barriers to economic progress for blacks are as intangible and as subject to remedial manipulation as Moynihan believes, then it is hard to see why these barriers have proved so difficult to overcome...
...Moynihan rather disarmingly admits, however, poverty experts depend for their jobs and influence on the belief that poverty can be overcome through government action that will have no effects on the non-poor majority or on the whole social structure. There is little evidence to support this belief, but it obviously has plenty of bureaucratic strength behind it, and therefore the arguments over poverty in America will continue to be arguments between reform-mongers and other reform mongers. Some reform-mongers will be more activist than others; some will street jobs more than political readjustment; others will stress political adjustments...