“If conservatives think that poverty and social injustice can be solved without government help, and that economic recovery requires only tax cuts and welfare reform, we should invite them to try it on a personal basis. We should invite them to settle in a run-down part of some northern city, deny themselves education, good social contacts and subsidized housing, take on the care of two or three small children and face a job market of unskilled low-paid work. Then we should invite them to go live the American Dream; and if they find that they cannot, then we should also invite them to admit that what they cannot do, others cannot be expected to do either. We should invite them to recognize that circumstances make people as well as people make circumstances, and that if we want people to prosper we must act on their circumstances also. The flourishing of individual rights, so important to American conservatives, requires equal starting points.”
- Answering Back: Liberal Responses to Conservative Arguments by David Coates
