The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass [Paperback]

Myron Magnet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

Myron Magnet argues that by telling the underclass they were powerless victims of a corrupt society, misguided 1960s pundits and their disciples erased the standards essential to striving and accomplishment, turning the inner cities into dens of anarchy. Magnet shows that when the messages of the 1960s became accepted wisdom, all of America was harmed--the poor most of all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The legacy of the subtitle, according to Magnet, a Fortune magazine editorial board member and Manhattan Institute for Policy Research analyst, is "a liberal, left-of-central worldview" that, despite the intentions of the 1960s counterculture advocates, divides our society more fully than ever into Haves and Have-Nots. The sexual revolution and the focus on free "expressiveness" had the effect of holding "the poor back from advancement by robbing them of responsibility for their fate and thus further squelching their initiative and energy." The counterculture, as subscribed to by mainstream media, the federal courts and such figures as Ted Kennedy, befuddled the work ethic with idealistic notions of civil rights and fair wages. Finding a poverty of spirit in recent art, such as the fiction of Anne Beattie and Bret Easton Ellis, Magnet urges that we " stop the current welfare system, stop quota-based affirmative action . . . stop letting bums expropriate public spaces . . . stop Afrocentric education in the schools." Magnet offers many examples of societal ills but fails to make a convincing case that the legacy of the counterculture is the culprit.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The Book that Helped Shape Bush's Message" What does Gov. George W. Bush mean by "compassionate conservatism"? Basically, government should do as little as necessary. But while we have a responsibility for ourselves, we also have a responsibility for each other.

Bush's [ideas] have been shaped by a 1993 book that blames the social and political permissiveness of the 1960s for many problems since then. That book, The Dream and the Nightmare, argues that overzealous efforts by the Haves to help the Have-Nots actually made their situation worse, not better.

Bush read the book before his first campaign for governor in 1994. Karl Rove, Bush's principal political adviser, describes it as a road map to the governor's attitutdes on the role of government. -- Dave McNeely, Austin American-Statesman, 1/27/1999

Myron Magnet has written the book of the decade. The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties Legacy to the Underclass is the most insightful analysis of what has gone wrong in America during the past 30 years. Any criticism of the welfare state, or criminal justice or the "new morality" by conservatives was instantly deemed small-minded and devoid of compassion by liberals. It is Magnet's thesis that the underclass came into existence not just despite liberal efforts to ameliorate poverty but because of the infection of liberal--specifically countercultural--ideas. -- Mona Charen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5/11/1993

Why . . . did so many indices of social pathology--crime, illegitimacy, dropping out of school, drug abuse, welfare dependency--suddenly and simultaneously go wrong in the late 1960s and early 1970s? [Magnet's] answer: . . .just when the successes of the civil rights movement were removing barriers to opportunities, the values and character traits that enable people to seize opportunities--industriousness, sobriety, thrift, self-discipline, deferral of gratification--were being subverted by cultural ridicule, welfare generosity, and judicial leniency.

Society, which should be a crucible for forming character, was becoming replete with "incentives to fail." Today the cultural inheritance indispensable for . . . social competence is not being transmitted to the people who are, primarily for that reason, mired in an intergenerational transmission of poverty. . . .

To read Magnet is to realize that the conservative critique of contemporary America is the more--indeed the only--radical critique just now. -- George Will, The Washington Post, 3/21/1993

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Quill (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688135129
• ISBN-13: 978-0688135126
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,758,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why The World Is The Way It Is, July 7, 2000

By 

Vincent Basehart - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Paperback)

I read the original edition of this book and it is still the most important social commentary I've ever read. For those who have ever asked, "Why is the world the way it is today?", this book will explain it.

Magnet traces all of our current social problems- from crime to drug addiction, broken families to pregnant teenagers to school violence - to the liberal social experimentation of the Sixties and early Seventies, using pure a priori logic, not demagoguery.

Additionally he shows how those once radical ideas have become our mainstream, unquestioned assumptions, the very Establishment itself; conservatives are now the radicals shaking up the system.

Enormously enlightening for anyone who really wants to understand our current social predicaments.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Waking Up to the Realities, October 1, 2007

By 

Dash Manchette - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Paperback)

THE DREAM AND THE NIGHTMARE is an exceptionally important book. President George W. Bush specifically referred to it as one of the most influential books he has read and made it the cornerstone of his compassionate conservativism. In the book, Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute attempts to answer one of the true riddles of our time: In a society of such opportunity, why is there an underclass that seems totally entrenched in failure and that seems incapable of finding its way into the respectable mainstream of American life?

For those in the middle class, this really is a puzzle. The answers seem so obvious. Get a job; gain work experience in order to climb the ladder; do not expect something for nothing; be selective about who you have sex with and use those precautions necessary to minimize unwanted pregnancies; when you do have kids, read to them and oversee their upbringing so that they can properly interact with others; and if you do take drugs, well, just make it the occasional joint, don't get all crazy there. The answer Magnet reaches has less to do with policy and more to do with philosophy. THE DREAM AND THE NIGHTMARE is a manifesto to the concept that ideas have consequences.

Magnet points to the significant paradigm shift of the 1960s, in which many elites thought it was progressive, even compassionate, to denigrate traditional notions of morality and the American way of life. Shifting the concept from personal responsibility among the poor to the idea that the poor are victims of society entitled to handouts, racial separation among blacks, sexual liberation, permissiveness regarding drug use, and other attitudes that demonstrated an oppositional mindset to the traditional notions of how to get ahead filtered down from the upper classes who espoused them to the lower classes who adopted them.

The results have been disastrous. As Magnet points out, many members of the upper class knew that there was a limit to how far they could go before jeopardizing themselves. And even for those who did go over the edge, there was usually some safety net among one's family and social structure that softened the blow. Yet when these same ideas were adopted by those at the lower end of the ladder, without the socialization which might have provided an internal barrier to holding back before the edge and without the external social structure to soften the landing, the results were something else indeed. The destruction of the two-parent family, rampant drug use and its attendant violence, laziness and a 'I deserve something to be handed to me' attitude have combined to stop the advance of a large section of our society in its tracks.

Magnet's theory explains not only how the underclass was created but also why so many factors of urban life seemed to erode at the same time. Specific policies may have an effect on this or that issue. But significant changes in a people's philosophy, the zeitgeist in which they live and breathe, will have a far wider impact. That is what we now see and it is a deeply disturbing sight for those of us who are witness to the results.

Unfortunately, the biggest impediment to change is also philosophical. It is all but impossible for someone to even discuss these issues without those on the political Left howling about racism, blaming the victim, blah, blah, blah. And the underclass itself is now so violent and disfunctional that it is nothing short of flat-out dangerous to address its members directly. Even then, the members of the underclass are so enveloped in their thinking that it is like talking to a brick wall. It is so bad that telling it straight is simply interpreted as racism or naivity about what life on the street is really like. The underclass displays that most damaging of traits - an imperviousness to negative yet accurate feedback. The road ahead looks dark indeed.

36 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eye-opening treatise!, August 4, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass (Paperback)

History and political science blend in this survey of the 1960s' legacy to modern times. Here Magnet argues that the radical events of the 1960s brought today's underclass and minorities into existence, producing changes in marriage and parenting which often led to dependency and closed doors for the underclass. An eye-opening treatise, The Dream and the Nightmare advocates a return to values honoring work, responsibility and law to help lift the barriers of poverty.