“Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America.” He’s a graduate of Harvard and currently teaches at Princeton University. In 2012 he will teach Religious Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary.

You may remember the ads that said, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Cornel West is the poster child for a mind that has gone to waste. He’s a self-admitted Socialist, and like all Socialists, he wouldn’t have the job he now has if it weren’t for Capitalists, the people he wants to destroy.

West wants another “war on poverty,” you know, like the one Lyndon Johnson started in the 1960s and increased the number of poor people in America and made them and their descendants perpetually dependent on government. When “Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1963, 93 percent of American children were born to married parents. Today the number has dropped to 59 percent.”1

Why the jump in the percentage of poor people? When something is subsidized, you get more of it. If people are paid for certain types of behavior, there will be more people who will want to get in on the free money. We’ve been making it easy for people to stay poor by meeting certain government poverty levels.

A similar thing happens with illegal immigration. If people south of our border know there are generous welfare benefits for being a citizen of the United States, they will do almost anything to have a baby born in the good old USA. We could stop most illegal immigration simply by denying all welfare benefits to illegal immigrants and the children of illegal immigrants even if those children are born here. Such a policy will never be implemented because it will hurt the Democrats.

With his Harvard education and his years of teaching at a first-tier university like Princeton, he’s nothing more than a highly paid revolutionary masquerading as a professor. He has no real solutions for poor people except “civil disobedience”:

Professor West didn’t just call for another war on poverty . . ., but went on to say that the push for more entitlements “is going to be fought in the streets.” West showered the Occupy movement with praise for making people aware of the issue.
“It’s a major question of priorities here. That’s why the Occupy movement is so important because some of this is going to be fought in the streets. Civil disobedience does make a difference,” he said.
“Corporate greed now is an issue everybody has got to talk about. Wealth inequality. Everybody must talk about it because of the Occupy movement,” Mr. West concluded.

Parents are spending top dollar to have their children taught by this economic moron. His call for civil disobedience will only entrap more people in the pit of poverty. His call for a “war on poverty” will end up being a war on the poor.

The best way to fix wealth inequality is to fire up the engine of capital investment, not by government intervention and economic redistribution, but by the free market.

We’ve heard about these millionaires who want to be taxed more. What fools they are. Movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly the other night, says he wants to pay more taxes. What Weinstein and his other millionaire friends should do is start a venture capital company and invest in business startups that teach poor kids necessary business skills.

Weinstein is a successful business man. So are his millionaire friends. They know how to make many, so why not teach people who don’t know how to make money learn how to do it?

I guess confiscatory taxes and civil disobedience in the streets is a lot easier and grabs bigger headlines.

1. Robert Rector, “Married Fathers: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty,” Heritage Foundation (June 16, 2010). [↩]