Many Republicans are expressing concern over a rising star in the Democratic Party, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Charismatic, articulate, Sen. Obama is often described, as George Will points out over at Town Hall, "a new kind of Democrat."

Will confronts some recent statements made by Sen. Obama, declaring the President without "empathy," accusing the Government of "historic indifference," "as bad as active malice." Will observes:

The senator, 44, is just 30 months older than the "war on poverty" that President Johnson declared in January 1964. Since then the indifference that is as bad as active malice has been expressed in more than $6.6 trillion of antipoverty spending, strictly defined.

Malicious, or indifferent. Whatever.

"We're quite concerned about your plight, here's quite enough for you to rebuild your lives."
"Oh, I suppose you expect gratitude," the supplicant sniffed. "It's not hardly enough, and if it weren't that I happen to be momentarily short of funds, I'd refuse your cheap generosity as beneath contempt."

Will suggests Sen. Obama consider a path to success altogether different than one beholden to or defined by Federal Governmental largesse:

The senator is called a ``new kind of Democrat,'' which often means one with new ways of ignoring evidence discordant with old liberal orthodoxies about using cash -- much of it spent through liberalism's ``caring professions'' -- to cope with cultural collapse. He might, however, care to note three not-at-all recondite rules for avoiding poverty: graduate from high school, don't have a baby until you are married, don't marry while you are a teenager. Among people who obey those rules, poverty is minimal.

Sadly, the more this Poverty is played as an issue of race, the more populations captive to the status of victimhood remain mired in delusion as to the solutions to their plight.

Poverty is not a form of institutional racism; such class rhetoric is a form of intellectual poverty, which even New Democrats are selling.

Links: Basil's Blog, Dawn Patrol at Mudville Gazette