Unless Democrats offer serious solutions to poverty, however, the poor only serve as props for their moral vanity.

Some educators and other specialists speak of a "culture of poverty" [And Heritage says the inferior culture of those damned inferior black folks is what's really holdin' down. And how dare you call that racist?] as if it were a collection of mores, values and rituals. But poverty is not a culture. It's more like an ecological system of relationships among individuals, families and the environment of schools, neighborhoods, jobs and government services. Professionals who aid the poor witness the toxic interactions every day. Doctors see patients affected by dangerous housing, erratic work schedules, transportation difficulties and poor child-rearing skills. Teachers see pupils undermined by violence at home and malnutrition.

About 35 million Americans live below the federal poverty line. Their opportunities are defined by forces that may look unrelated, but decades of research have mapped the web of connections. A 1987 study of 215 children attributed differences in I.Q. in part to "social risk factors" like maternal anxiety and stress, which are common features of impoverished households. Research in the 1990's demonstrated how the paint and pipes of slum housing — major sources of lead — damage the developing brains of children. Youngsters with elevated lead levels have lower I.Q.'s and attention deficits, and — according to a 1990 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine — were seven times more likely to drop out of school.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Galbraith, John Kenneth

One remedy, tried by community action centers created by the War on Poverty, put a variety of specialists under one roof. Their effectiveness unsettled politicians. "Mayors didn't like them because they were doing something that was very good," recalls Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science and sociology at City University of New York. "They were badgering municipal agencies to provide services." The money for the centers eventually dried up.

We need more than patchwork projects[!] We need a sweeping national program to create what could be called gateways. At private and public institutions that are frequented every day — clinics, schools, food banks, housing projects, police precincts and the like — a person should be able to find easy referrals to child-rearing instruction, drug treatment and whatever other assistance people need[!]

!"[Mr. Compassion then adds, "Of course, all this will require a tax increase."]

What works is an intensive, holistic approach like the one used by the Maya Angelou Charter School in Washington. The school brings its 100 students in for breakfast and keeps them until after dinner. They have small classes, homework sessions with 75 volunteers and counseling from three full-time social workers and a psychologist. Most students arrive in 10th grade reading at sixth- or seventh-grade levels; three years later 70 percent go to college. The cost isn't low — it runs over $25,000 annually per student — but it is a humane investment, one that is helped in part by donations. With more money, the school could become a platform for supporting whole families.