a moment of clarity.

words.

"Blaming poverty on the mysterious influence of “culture” is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to address the problem.

...Confronting the devastation suffered by what used to be working-class communities is hard; adjusting to post-globalization economic realities is harder. Say the word culture and you sound erudite and concerned, especially if you drop the name of the Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, who described world affairs as a clash of civilizations with different cultural values.

My problem is that when you identify something so amorphous as culture as the fundamental issue, you excuse yourself for not proposing concrete solutions. ...If we had universal pre- kindergarten that fed all children into high-quality schools, if we had affordable higher education, if we incentivized industry to invest in troubled communities — if people had options for which they were prepared — culture would take care of itself.

But all of that is expensive. Hot air, as Paul Ryan knows, is cheap."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Paul Ryan’s culture attack is an excuse to do nothing about poverty