The Noble DestitutenGeorge Gilder: Visible Man; BasicnBooks; New York.nby Kenneth KolsonnWhen my generation was in collegen—back in the days before America wasn”greened”—one of the “in” writers wasnOscar Lewis, author of, most notably.nThe Children of Sanchez (New York:nRandom House, 1961), as well as annumber of celebrated articles about povertynthat appeared in Harper’s duringnthe early- and mid-1960s. As creaturesnof the affluent post-World War II societynwe had had no direct experience ofnpoverty or the traumas associated withnmassive unemployment or double-digitninflation. But we had, some of us, heardnat our parents’ knees—to the point ofnbecoming practically inured to them—nthe Great Depression Parables: thosenstories of soup lines and Apple-Annies;nof idle men too proud to “go on relief”n(as it was quaintly called); of Waltonsizednclans huddled around the Philconstraining through the static to hearnFDR’s reports from the front lines innthat campaign that Madison Avenue—nif it had had a chance (a reminder ofnjust how recently advertising and nationalnpolitics have been joined in unholynmatrimony)—would have dubbed thenWar on Fear; of the Dust Bowl andn”Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime.””; ofndead-end kids with hearts of gold. Onencan only guess how many jaded sonsnand daughters of Levittown yearned fornthese heroic days of yore; for my generationnWoody Guthrie was the middleclassnwhite boy’s Kunta Kinte.nPoverty could be ennobling: that wasnthe lesson we were supposed to drawnfrom the Depression. This is why OscarnLewis’ work, for those of us with socialnconsciences, was so unsettling. Lewisnwrote about what he called the “culturenProfessor Kolson teaches political sciencenat Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio.n18 inChronicles of Culturenof poverty.” Impoverishment, contrarynto what our parents had told us, was notnjust a matter of economics; Lewis understoodnit to be also a state of mind. Lewis’ndescription of that state made an indeliblenimpression on me, as did Edward C.nBanfield’s The Moral Basis of a BackwardnSociety (New York: The FreenPress, 1958), which showed how culturalnnorms can prevent an otherwisenresourceful people from taking the stepsnnecessary to lift their common cursenof poverty.nThe idea that there was somethingnperverse about the poor made a greatndeal of sense to my generation—again,nperhaps, because we had no direct experiencenof poverty ourselves. Just hownmuch political sense such an idea madenduring the early 1960s was to be revealednby the publication of MichaelnHarrington’s The Other America (Baltimore:nPenguin Books, 1963), whichnwas described by its publisher as “thenbook that sparked the War on Poverty.”nHere the culture-of-poverty theme wasndeveloped to its logical conclusion, thenbottom line being that we “liberals” hadnto abandon the woolly-headed notionnthat poverty might be cured simply byn”throwing money at the problem,” even,nif necessary, to the point of making thenpoor—technically—rich. For as Harringtonnpointed out, being rich is:n”. . . not a simple fact, like a largenbank account, but a way of looking atnreality, a series of attitudes, a specialntype of life. If this is true of the rich,nit is ten times truer of the poor. Everythingnabout them, from the conditionnof their teeth to the way in which theynlove, is suffused and permeated bynthe fact of their poverty.”nThis regrettably, means that the problemnwith the poor is not a simple casenof deprivation, relative or otherwise.nThe problem of poverty has more to donwith the psychological deformation ofnthe poor; an unlimited line of credit atnnnBloomingdale’s evidently will do thenpoor no good. As a team of Cornellnmental health researchers concludednduring the ’50s, the poor are “rigid,nsuspicious and have a fatalistic outlooknon life. They do not plan ahead, a characteristicnassociated with their fatalism.nThey are prone to depression, have feelingsnof futility, lack of belongingness,nfriendliness, and a lack of trust in others.”nElaborating on the perpetual Saturdaynnight in which many of the poornseem to live, Harrington observed thatn”they do not postpone satisfaction, . . .nthey do not save. When pleasure is available,nthey tend to take it immediately.”nThis in turn is related to the fact thatnthe poor tend to be, as Harrington discreetlynput it, “less inhibited,” andn”sometimes violent.” “The poor,” Harringtonnconcluded, “are not like everyonenelse. They are a different kind ofnpeople. They think and feel differentlyn. . .”In short, the philosophy adherednto by middle-class “liberals” likenmyself (basically, the philosophy of thenbourgeois monarch Louis Philippe:n”Enrichissez-vous!”) simply had to benjettisoned if the poor were to be nonlonger with us.nWhat, then, was to be done.’ SincenHarrington, like Lewis (and Banfield)nbefore him, insisted that poverty be conceivednas a state of mind, he proposed tondevelop some new definitions of thenconcept:n”Poverty should be defined psychologicallynin terms of those whose placenin the society is such that they areninternal exiles who, almost inevitably,ndevelop attitudes of defeat and pessimismnand who are therefore excludednfrom taking advantage of new opportunities.”nThe similarity between this languagenand that of Chief Justice Warren in hisn1954 opinion in Brown v. Board ofnEducation ought to be noted in passing.nFor Warren, the famous school-segre-n