Violence in America: The History of a Catastrophe

[Stefan Molyneux 230]

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bRDNgd6E4]

 

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, reveals the truth about the history and future of violence in America.

Freedomain Radio is the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web - http://www.freedomainradio.com

 

 

1. ( J10) Article: America Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Gang Problem

Description:

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Includes extremely high murder rates for various U.S cities. Shows how alone, these cities are more murder prevalent than poorer, 3rd world countries. [/font]
Shows that these high-murder level cities are not “Mccain and Romney territory” but the instead the voting base for Obama (probably relatively high government dependency rate relative to other cities). [/font]
Shows that criminals do the vast majority of the homicides. [/font]
Shows that gangs are responsible for most of the homicides. [/font]

Argument Support:

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If these cities are not known for high gun ownership rates this could be a good way to prove that the gun ownership doesn’t kill but is also correlated with a lower homicide rate. [/font]
If these cities do have a higher government dependence level than other cities, this could be a good way to show that government dependence is correlated with higher homicide rates. If these cities do have a higher government dependence level than others, other dysfunctions would be useful to look into to be correlated with the higher government dependence. [/font]
Gun control. Previously convicted criminals in gangs do almost all the homicides. Making guns illegal doesn’t change whether or not these “illegal” people have guns, it changes whether or not their victims can have the potential to legally defend themselves. [/font]
The problem is gangs so if gangs could be shown to be much the result of non-nuclear families and that non-nuclear families are much the result of welfare prevalence, than a strong case can be made to connect welfare to homicides. [/font]
Can’t keep guns out of criminal’s hands through gun control (I’m not just talking about the police). Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico, and trying to cut off their gun supply will be as effective as trying to cut off their drug supply.[/font]

Important / Top Facts:

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Those 12 cities alone account for nearly 3,200 dead and nearly a quarter of all murders in the United States.[/font]
Chicago, where Obama delivered his victory speech, has homicide numbers that match all of Japan and are higher than Spain, Poland and pre-war Syria. If Chicago gets any worse, it will find itself passing the number of murders for the entire country of Canada.[/font]
Chicago’s murder rate of 15.65 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, the Midwestern 4.5 or the Illinois’ 5.6 rates[/font]
To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war or decades of tyranny.[/font]
New Orleans which at an incredible 72.8 murder rate is ten times higher than the national average.[/font]
New Orleans were a country, it would have the 2nd highest murder rate in the world, beating out El Salvador.[/font]
Louisiana went red for Romney 58 to 40, but [/font]Orleans Parish went blue for Obama 80 to 17.[/font]
Detroit has a worse murder rate than Colombia. Obama won Detroit’s Wayne County 73 to 26.[/font]
Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago last year had criminal records. In [/font]Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In [/font]New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%.[/font]
Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico, and trying to cut off their gun supply will be as effective as trying to cut off their drug supply.[/font]

Leads, ideas to Look for:

Level of government dependence for various U.S cities including the ones listed in the article and the least crime ridden ones. Government dependence can be judged by: welfare rate, food-stamp rate and level of public industry.[/font]
If the above finding correlates in the predicted way, also find the level of dysfunctionality for the cities and see if it correlates with their level of government dependence. Dysfunctionality can be judged by: Teen pregnancy rates, average level of income, prevalency of single parent households, university graduate percentage, high school graduate percentage, murder rate, domestic violence rate, crime rate, drug user rate, obesity rate, average IQ level[/font]
Look for facts that show that gang members mostly come from non-nuclear family households.[/font]
Look for facts that show that welfare influences non-nuclear family households.[/font]
Look for historical numbers before and after the welfare state to show the correlations between welfare and single parent households. [/font]

2. Gangs, Welfare and life-long dysfunction
1-2-3 Punch: 1) Gangs commit most of the crimes
                              2) Gang members mostly come from illegitimate families
                       3) Welfare strongly influences illegitimate families

( J10) Single parent = Gangs Link

Pearson correlation coefficients revealed that the strongest negative correlations with gang-related homicide were log mean per capita income and proportion employed, and the strongest positive correlations were proportion single-parent families and proportion younger than 20 years of age.

( J10) Single parent = Gangs Link

Why do African-Americans, with 12.6 percent of the nation’s population, account for 50 percent of the murder victims? Because fatherlessness is most pervasive among blacks. The illegitimacy rate among all Americans has been rising for decades. In 2012, we reached a grim milestone: The majority of births to women under the age of 30 are now outside of marriage. Among blacks, 72 percent of births are to unmarried women. And while some unmarried mothers go on to marry the fathers of their babies, it’s rare in the African-American community, where only 31 percent of couples are married (in 1960, it was 61 percent).

The result of this adult folly is chaos, misery and often violent death for kids. Why do young males join gangs? Because without a father to guide and protect them, they seek physical protection from human predators as well as ratification of their masculinity from the gang. A counselor at a juvenile detention facility in California told the Patriot Post, “(If) you find a gang member who comes from a complete nuclear family, I’d like to meet him. ... I don’t think that kid exists.” A full 85 percent of youths in prison come from fatherless homes, as do 80 percent of rapists, 71 percent of high school dropouts and 63 percent of teen suicides.

An analysis of studies of family structure published by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy found that 90 percent of the change in the violent crime rate from 1973 to 1995 was traceable to the rise of illegitimate births. A large sample looking at students in 315 classrooms in 11 cities concluded that “the single most important variable (in ‘gang centrality’) is the family’s structure ... the greater the number of parents in the household, the lower the reported gang centrality.”

( J10) Single parent = Crimes Link

The concentration of single-parent families can affect even those with two parents. A study of 4,671 eighth-graders in 10 cities found that students who attended school with a large number of fatherless classmates were more likely to commit crimes, even if they came from intact families themselves.

( J10) Single parent = Poverty ( Argument A on the other page) Link

According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families.

( J10) 1960-1970s =  decline debut Link

Overall child well-being has declined, despite a decrease in the number of children per family, an increase in the educational level of parents, and historically high levels of public spending. After dropping in the 1960s and 1970s, the proportion of children in poverty has increased dramatically, from 15 percent in 1970 to 20 percent in 1990, while the percentage of adult Americans in poverty has remained roughly constant. The teen suicide rate has more than tripled. Juvenile crime has increased and become more violent. School performance has continued to decline. There are no signs that these trends are about to reverse themselves.

In the 1960s the rate of family disruption suddenly began to rise. After inching up over the course of a century, the divorce rate soared. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the divorce rate held steady at fewer than ten divorces a year per 1,000 married couples. Then, beginning in about 1965, the rate increased sharply, peaking at twenty-three divorces per 1,000 marriages by 1979. (In 1974 divorce passed death as the leading cause of family breakup.) The rate has leveled off at about twenty-one divorces per 1,000 marriages--the figure for 1991. The out-of-wedlock birth rate also jumped. It went from five percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1990. In 1990 close to 57 percent of births among black mothers were nonmarital, and about 17 percent among white mothers. Altogether, about one out of every four women who had a child in 1990 was not married. With rates of divorce and nonmarital birth so high, family disruption is at its peak. Never before have so many children experienced family breakup caused by events other than death. Each year a million children go through divorce or separation and almost as many more are born out of wedlock.

( J10) Single parent = Crimes ( This is a very good piece to help prove argument A from the other page) Link

Nationally, more than 70 percent of all juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes. A number of scholarly studies find that even after the groups of subjects are controlled for income, boys from single-mother homes are significantly more likely than others to commit crimes and to wind up in the juvenile justice, court, and penitentiary systems. One such study summarizes the relationship between crime and one-parent families in this way: "The relationship is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime.

( J10) Welfare = Crime

Last year, the Maryland NAACP released a report concluding that "the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today."  

Welfare contributes to crime in several ways. First, children from single-parent families are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. According to one study, children raised in single-parent families are one-third more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior. Moreover, O'Neill found that, holding other variables constant, black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present. Nearly 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes, as do 43 percent of prison inmates. Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood.

Analysis  of  over  50,000  Washington  State  birth  certificates  from  1974  to  1975 revealed that males born to unmarried mothers under 18 years old had an 11-fold increased risk of chronic offending when compared with males born to married mothers  aged  20  and  older. Link

( J10) Welfare = Wedlock

At the same time, the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation.

Holding constant a wide range of variables,

including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.

The same results can be seen from welfare systems in other countries. For example, a recent study of the impact of Canada's social-welfare system on family structure concluded that "providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed

women."

A teenager looking around at her friends and neighbors is liable to see

several who have given birth out of wedlock. When she sees that they have suffered few visible immediate consequences (the very real consequences of such behavior are often not immediately apparent), she is less inclined to modify her own behavior to prevent pregnancy.  Proof of this can be found in a study by Professor Ellen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania, who surveyed black, never-pregnant females age 17 or younger. Only 40% of those surveyed said that they thought becoming pregnant in the next year "would make their situation worse."(10) Likewise, a study by Professor Laurie Schwab Zabin for the Journal of Research on Adolescence found that: "in a sample of inner-city black teens presenting for pregnancy tests, we reported that more than 31 percent of those who elected to carry their pregnancy to term told us, before their pregnancy was diagnosed, that they believed a baby would present a problem..."(11) In other words, 69 percent either did not believe having a baby out-of-wedlock would present a problem or were unsure. Link



( J10) Welfare = earlier pregnancy = increased homicide

An American study into income inequality found that adolescent birth rates and general homicide rates were closely correlated with each other internationally and within the U.S
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/QtwpUHy70XsXl2iPCODh59t0_35aB9jTuBoQEtI9Dx9E5YGzfjfYT7vDg08dBLhU_I_F8Bz-fIht5EKsQttDV1PIr5CEcScAUqlzSgXKjM0A_uTONug

That  a  similar  pattern  operates  in New Zealand  cannot  be discounted without the relevant research.  The  findings  may  partly  explain  why  Maori (the aboriginal people of New Zealand) make  up  around  half  of  our  prison population. As shown the Maori teenage birth rate is much higher than non-Maori. Maori  are eight  times  more  likely  than  non-Maori  to  be  teenage  parents  on welfare, which compounds disadvantage. Link

( J10) Welfare = continued illegitimacy

I should also point out that, once the child is born, welfare also appears to discourage the mother from marrying in the future. Research by Robert Hutchins of Cornell University shows that a 10 percent increase in AFDC benefits leads to an eight percent decrease in the marriage rate of single mothers. Link

( J10) Welfare = alienation

There are certainly many factors contributing to the increasing alienation and

marginalization of young black men, including racism, poverty, and the failure of our educational system. However, welfare contributes as well. The welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family. They are in effect cuckolded by the state. Their role of father and breadwinner is supplanted by the welfare check. Link



( J10) Non married men = more prone to violence

...single men are five times more likely to commit violent crimes than married men. Link

( J10) Matriarchy = Gang potential

Finally, in areas where there is a high concentration of welfare, there may be an almost total lack of male role models....boys growing up in mother only families naturally seek male influences. Unfortunately, in many inner city neighborhoods, those male role models may not exist. As George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, has noted, the typical inner-city today is "almost a matriarchy. The women receive all the income, dominate the social-worker classes, and most of the schools." Thus, the boy in search of male guidance and companionship may end up in the company of gangs or other undesirable influences. Link

( J10) Welfare = Increased Crime

Counter-intuitively, many people believe that welfare reduces crime by providing an income to people who might otherwise become destitute. Yet New Zealand statistics show that welfare benefits are supporting the criminal classes.  Figures released under the Official Information Act show there has been a sharp increase in the number of people who have had their benefits cancelled because they went to prison. In 2009 4,192 people had their benefit cancelled because they were going to prison. That is 37 percent up on the 2008 figure, and 47 percent up on the 2007 figure. 58 percent were Maori, 89 percent male and 47 percent came off a sickness or invalid's benefit. 468 parents or caregivers also left the DPB to go to prison. Link

( J11 ) Year after year the Department of Health and Human Services cites African Americans as the largest race/ethnicity group on welfare in percentage terms, usually 34%-38%. Link

( J11 ) Persistent poverty leads to familial dysfunction

...children who live in persistent poverty are twice as likely to live in a "dysfunctional" family, they are twice as likely to live with violence, and more than three times as likely to live with a depressed parent – all risk factors for social exclusion and eventual criminality. Link

Forced Poverty; Violence achieves the opposite of its goal ( J11)

- Unfortunately, child poverty in Canada shows no signs of diminishing. While the rate decreased slightly in the latter half of the 1990s, the latest figures indicate a child poverty rate of 15.6% – nearly one in six children. That is even higher than the rate of 15.2% recorded in 1989 when the House of Commons unanimously committed to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. Instead, the number of children going hungry and the number of families becoming homeless increased substantially throughout the 1990s, further excluding these Canadians. Link

( J11 ) Proximity to welfare = increased child abuse. Link

Welfare dependence is increasing in america (ctrl f “123” )

Child abuse is increasing in america (ctrl f “124” )

…and we know abuse = crime

- Child abuse is prevalent in "communities of abuse" characterized by family breakdown. These also are communities of crime, characterized by the absence of marriage, the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, and a primary dependence on welfare. Children who grow up in these "communities" show signs of permanent damage; moreover, as statistics follow them over time, many prove to have been damaged for life. From these communities of abuse come society's "superpredators" (the psychopathic criminals of tomorrow), violent gang members, and other hostile, depressed, and frequently even suicidal young people.

3. Gang violence - Gangs commit an enormous amount of the total crimes:



( J10) Gangs Blamed for 80 Percent of U.S. Crimes Link

( J10) In Los Angeles and Long Beach, gang homicides account for the majority of homicides among 15 to 24-year-olds, 61 and 69 percent, respectively. In both the gang and non-gang worlds, homicide is the second leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 24. Link

( J10) Approximately 80 percent of all murders and shootings in the city of Chicago are gang-related Link

4. Book: Losing ground
(not always 100% correctly paraphrased except for the numbers)

( J10) “The government social policy helped set the rules of the game, the stakes, the risks, the payoffs, the tradeoffs, the strategies for making a living, raising a family, having fun, defining what winning and success mean...”[/font]
( J10) “The first effect of the new rules was to make it profitable for the poor to behave in the short term in ways that were destructive in the long term. Their second effect was to mask these long term loses, to subsidize irretrievable mistakes...”[/font]

5. Aboriginal communities

( J11) Corruption in governance of aboriginal communities in Canada has been reported to

be endemic. The socio-economic status of aboriginal communities appeared to be similar to countries with low Human Development Index. Link

( J11) Extra Welfare now and in history for native Canadians Link

- ( J11) 1966 Canada Assistance Plan, the federal government accepted to

pay half of a province’s social assistance costs, as long as certain conditions were respected regarding access, including regular coverage for all Aboriginal persons except Indians currently or in the previous year on reserves, which remained a federal responsibility.

( J11) All provinces reformed their social assistance along these lines, and the

Department of Indian Affairs designed its income assistance to Indians on reserves to match the going provincial rates

- ( J11) By 1990, 28.6% of Aboriginal identity persons over 15 years old received social assistance.  For Indians on reserve, the rate was even higher, at 41.5%...

- ( J11) In 2003, 34.8% of Indians on reserve received social assistance,

compared to 5.5% for the country’s general population.  In Manitoba, this rate for on-reserve Indians was 43.9%...

- ( J11) Over time, a number of benefits and services were added, to cover, in particular, labor market and economic development programs, child welfare, education, health and housing.  It is not possible, here, to present a full picture of these programs, but the resulting arrangement can be characterized as a somewhat modified version of the Canadian welfare state.  Labor market and economic development programs are provided by the federal government to all Aboriginal peoples, as they are for all Canadians, since they are within the bounds of federal jurisdiction.  Child welfare, education, health and housing programs, on the other hand, follow the bifurcated social assistance pattern...

( J11) Aboriginal people's living standards have improved in the past 50 years, but they do not come close to those of non-Aboriginal people:

( J11) Life expectancy is lower, Illness is more common, Human problems, from family violence to alcohol abuse, are more  common too, Fewer children graduate from high school, Far fewer go on to colleges and universities, The homes of Aboriginal people are more often flimsy, leaky and overcrowded, Water and sanitation systems in Aboriginal communities are more often inadequate, Fewer Aboriginal people have jobs, More spend time in jails and prisons. Link

( J11) Urban Poverty in Canada, showed that Aboriginal people living in urban areas were more than twice as likely to live in poverty as non-Aboriginal people. Link

[/font]

( J11) Native Welfare/Poverty correlation:

According to the United Nations, First Nations children in western countries live in Third World conditions, with an estimated 80% of urban Aboriginal children under the age of 6 living in poverty. The number of Aboriginal children involved with the child welfare system across Canada is also growing, and it rose by 71.5% between 1995 and 2001. Link

( J11) Welfare = familial dysfunction = crime for the native community

he 1996 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples clearly linked unemployment, low income and poor educational attainment in their communities to subsequent criminality.

Correctional Service of Canada also notes that Aboriginal offenders are more likely than non-Aboriginal offenders to have experienced poverty, family violence and substance abuse in their home environment, and as children, they were more likely to have been involved with child welfare services.

T

Various native canadian vs non-native statistics Link

-( J11) ....the employment rate of Aboriginal peoples being almost ten percentage points    below that of the non-Aboriginal  population (53.7% compared to 62.7% in 2005).

- ( J11) Basic education, for instance, was not as likely to be achieved, 43.7% of Aboriginal Canadians having less than a secondary education, compared to 23.1% for the non-Aboriginal population.

- ( J11) Aboriginal identity persons also had significantly shorter life expectancy, and they faced higher risks of suffering from obesity, from chronic illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure or heart problems, or from infectious diseases like tuberculosis and chlamydia (Canadian Population Health Initiative, 2004: 80-84).

- ( J11) Table 1: Proportion of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal population below

Statistics Canada’s low income cut off after tax, in Canada and in

the provinces, 2005

Aboriginal identity     Non-Aboriginal       Gap

(percentage points)

Nfld and Labrador 12.5% 8.7% 3.8%

P.E.I. 16.2% 6.9% 9.3%

Nova Scotia 15.4% 9.5% 5.9%

New Brunswick 17.5% 9.2% 8.3%

Québec 19.5% 12.5% 7.0%

Ontario 18.4% 11.0% 7.4%

Manitoba 28.6% 10.2% 18.4%

Saskatchewan 28.2% 7.8% 20.4%

Alberta 1 <