Word: murrayism
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What is so strange is that ten years ago, it was social programs that didn't work that were under attack. It was a Charles A. Murray '65 strain of conservatism that argued for cuts, not because the expense was too great, but because the rewards were non-existent. We dismantled welfare (2.8 percent of the federal budget) not because it was too expensive, but because it didn't work. But the '90s have brought in a new and perhaps more pernicious strain of conservatism to bear: an entrepreneurial conservatism of efficiency and market values now threatens even America...
Conservatives (both Democrats and Republicans) have a lot to gain from spooking you. Conservatives know full well that the only way to roll back Social Security is to undermine its public confidence. The Murray argument will not work with Social Security because the program works (in the last 40 years, the elderly poverty rate has plummeted by two-thirds). Those who are out to get Social Security are not arguing that the program doesn't work (as they did in the welfare debate); they are scaring you into believing that Social Security is unsustainable...
Cose covers a lot of ground, from Francis Galton's eugenics theory, which equated good English breeding with racial superiority, to contemporary social-so-called-science that has attempted to give racism a respectable face. It is no surprise that Exhibit A is Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial 1994 best seller, The Bell Curve. Cose joins the chorus of critics who rightly challenged the authors' credentials and ideological ties. "There is" for them, he says, "something comforting in the belief--even if it is rooted in fiction--that certain unfortunate realities are beyond our control, that certain unfortunate...
...Madalyn Murray O'Hair is no longer an essential national figure--either to the public at large or to America's closeted or activist atheists, most of whom long ago shifted their allegiance to her successor organizations. But her absence leaves what the theologically inclined might call a Madalyn-shaped hole at a building in Austin. There is an air of melancholy these days about the American Atheists general headquarters on a stretch of Cameron Road. Instead of a business name (the building is unmarked), the large sign above the fenced-in parking lot reads FOR SALE. American Atheists' officers...
DAVID VAN BIEMA, TIME's religion writer, was looking for a way to write about the state of atheism in America when he became intrigued with an even more fascinating story: the bizarre disappearance of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, America's best-known nonbeliever. No one has seen O'Hair since, as legend has it, she walked away from an unfinished breakfast in August 1995. Van Biema's pursuit of the missing activist took him to Austin, Texas, where her organization has its headquarters. The mystery deepened when his sources starting contradicting one another. "Those discrepancies roused my curiosity...