THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief The Covenant with Black America edited by Tavis Smiley (Third World Press, 254 pp., $12.00). This shrill bit of agitprop that purports to be a manifesto of...
...Radio and TV talk-show host Tavis Smiley prevailed upon a number of fellow blacks who are experts in one field or another to contribute a chapter each on a variety of different public policy issues: health care, education, criminal justice, voting rights, housing, jobs, and so forth...
...The list for individuals is generally unobjectionable (the first item urges "eat at least one additional fruit or vegetable daily") but incomplete, and this book is far from a call for African Americans to take responsibility for their own lives...
...Somehow, Mr...
...the authors do not simply identify a program's failings, they supply a detailed plan to correct them...
...It narrows them down to six main areas, with a view toward making America more responsible, prosperous, and safe, and surveys past programs, pointing out both their failures and their triumphs...
...Most importantly, this is the one problem that could be solved by the African American community all by itself, without government help...
...It suggests antidotes for America's ails by drawing from the words of the Founding Fathers, words that every American can trust to restore our nation to its strong position of promise...
...In this 254-page book there are exactly two, count 'em, two sentences—and oblique ones at that—on what is far and away the number-one problem facing African Americans: Seven out of 10 black children today are born out of wedlock...
...And the list of desired government programs is just a warmed-over collection of liberal/left bromides: universal health care, reenfranchising felons, increasing the minimum wage to "a living wage," and so on...
...Getting America Right categorizes the main concerns that every careful American considers when examining the activities of today's government—concerns that even those who dispute Feulner and Wilson's solutions will benefit from studying...
...Roger Clegg Getting America Right by Edwin J. Feulner and Doug Wilson (Crown Forum, 256 pp., $26.95) This manual, written by Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner and Doug Wilson of Townhall...
...Here's the kicker, though...
...Getting America Right has the further advantage of sparing the reader annoying arm-chair legislative opining...
...This approach is refreshingly straightforward...
...com, is one of those books you wish were given to every American...
...It won't happen, of course—at least, not while Tavis Smiley and other so-called African American "leaders" ignore the elephant in the room...
...It is a model of argumentation and commentary...
...This shrill bit of agitprop that purports to be a manifesto of what-black-Americans-need-and-deserve has generated a lot of undeserved buzz...
...The Founders' self-reliant temperament fueled the extraordinary experiment that is our nation, and empowers individuals to play a more dynamic role in the government's activity...
...Smiley failed to include any essays by John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, or Orlando Patterson...
...Indeed, the list for individuals in every chapter ends with this item: "MOST OF ALL: Hold all leaders and elected officials responsible and demand that they change current policy...
...Fixing this problem would narrow all the other socioeconomic disparities the book complains about dramatically...
...The book encourages "We the People" to confront our nation's challenges with greater knowledge of the obstacles, and to trust in the American spirit that has enabled us to surmount them from the very start...
...Mary Rose Rybak...
...It could go from 7 out of 10 to zero out of 10 in nine months, without passing a single bill or spending a dime...
...Each chapter begins with an essay by the expert, followed by a table of "facts," lists of what the community and individual African Americans can do, vignettes of successful local initiatives already in place, and then a discussion of programs that the government ought to enact...
...Since growing up in a home without a father has a high correlation with most social pathologies, the refusal to confront this issue is cowardly and unconscionable...
Vol. 11 • May 2006 • No. 33
