What Makes Charity Work?: A Century of Public and Private Philanthropy

by Myron Magnet

Overview

A compassionate America has spent more than $5 trillion on welfare programs over three decades, but the poor haven't vanished, and the self-destructive behavior that imprisons many in poverty has become an intergenerational inheritance. Drawing on the City Journal's superlative reporting, What Makes Charity Work? shows in concrete and compelling detail how government assistance to the poor is doomed to failure — because it treats them as victims of forces beyond their control, robs them of a sense of personal responsibility, and neglects the virtues they need to escape poverty. Contrasting case studies of charities both old and new show how charity can succeed spectacularly when it encourages the poor to take control of their own lives and teaches them habits of self-reliance and the traditional virtues. Here are accounts of charities that follow these precepts and have not only brought individuals into the economic and social mainstream but have delivered whole classes of people from poverty and degradation into the middle class in a single generation. As welfare reform unfolds, and as the nation calculates how to implement the "charitable choice" provision of the 1996 welfare reform act that allows government to use private and religious charities in helping the poor, policymakers and concerned Americans will find both encouraging and cautionary case studies in What Makes Charity Work? Here is an urgent issue considered in vivid, practical, and unfailingly absorbing fashion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566633345
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	09/12/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Myron Magnet is editor of City Journal, the highly respected quarterly magazine published in New York by The Manhattan Institute. He has also written The Dream and the Nightmare and edited What Makes Charity Work? and The Millennial City.

Read an Excerpt

we are not the first generation of New Yorkers puzzled by what to do about the underclass. A hundred years ago and more, Manhattan's tens of thousands of Irish seemed a lost community, mired in poverty and ignorance, destroying themselves through drink, idleness, violence, criminality, and illegitimacy.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction vii How Dagger John Saved New York's Irish 3 by william j. stern Once We Knew How to Rescue Poor Kids 23 by william j. stern How the Agency Saved My Father 41 by howard husock Philanthropy That Worked 69 by leo trachtenberg Why the Boy Scouts Work 89 by heather mac donald How Catholic Charities Lost Its Soul 108 by brian c. anderson Behind the Hundred Neediest Cases 124 by heather mac donald The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse 145 by heather mac donald What Good Is Pro Bono? 172 by heather mac donald How Businessmen Shouldn't Help the Schools 190 by sol stern Who Says the Homeless Should Work? 207 by sol stern At Last, a Job Program That Works 217 by kay s. hymowitz A Note on Contributors 231 Index 233

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Editorial Reviews

It is the definitive forum for the best new ideas in urban government.

John Norquist

Even when I disagree with City Journal, I dare not ignore it.

Bill Moyers

City Journal is consistently the most stimulating source of reporting and analysis.

GEORGE WILL

City Journal is the great Fool Killer in the arena of urban policy. It's more than sharp and penetrating.

Tom Wolfe

City Journal is consistently the most stimulating source of reporting and analysis.

George Will

Influenced by "practical visionaries" such as Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford, America began the 20th century with a judicious commitment to help those among the less fortunate who were most willing to help themselves. A century later, argues Mac Donald, a journalist and John M. Olin fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, we are gripped in a choke hold by liberal social programs plagued by massive, systemic problems. In this crisp and well-argued collection of essays, she wonders why we tolerate generations raised on welfare, reinforce teen pregnancy (by, for example, providing day-care centers at high schools) and accept public schools where the three Rs are overlooked so that kids can work on perfecting their graffiti. Instead of blaming all of society's ills on a perceived insensitivity to diversification (e.g., racism and sexism), why don't we investigate what happened to individual responsibility? she asks. She swiftly and deliberately attacks liberal individuals and institutions of every stripe--from the most influential philanthropists to the leading public health institutions to the ivory towers of academia and the media, particularly the New York Times, which in her view not only reports the news but also creates it--with the aim of exposing the flaws in their philosophies and the drastic, real-world consequences of their actions. Mac Donald's incisive insights deserve the thoughtful attention of voters of all political affiliations this election year. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Most of the 12 essays collected here first appeared in City Journal, an urban affairs publication of the Manhattan Institute, where Mac Donald is a fellow. In each, she lambastes "today's elite intellectual orthodoxy," as manifested by institutions such as the Ford Foundation, the New York Times, Teachers College, the Smithsonian Institution, law schools, and a variety of agencies carrying out public policy in such areas as welfare, foster care, and homelessness. She finds excesses of liberalism everywhere and holds liberal policies responsible for self-perpetuating poverty, racial and cultural politics, school failure, and other forms of malaise. While her examples are shocking and her style sometimes clever, after a point Mac Donald's chapters seem like templates, the details different but the formula the same: one easy target after another set up and then knocked down. Readers who already agree with Mac Donald will be entertained; others will quickly put the book away. Both groups would do better with a wittier and richer work of social criticism such as Culture of Complaint (LJ 3/15/93) by Robert Hughes, who makes some of the same points. An optional purchase.--Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

A collection of recent case studies from , a quarterly magazine of urban affairs published by The Manhattan Institute. Articles show in detail how government assistance to the poor is doomed to failure because it treats them as victims of forces beyond their control, robs them of a sense of personal responsibility, and neglects the virtues they need to escape poverty. They show how charity can succeed when it encourages the poor to take control and teaches them habits of self-reliance and traditional virtues. Magnet is editor of . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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