His name is Myron Magnet. Eight years ago he published a book called “The Dream and the Nightmare,” which George W. Bush has called the most influential book — aside from the Bible — that he’s ever read.
The new president’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove, has declared “The Dream and the Nightmare” a “road map” to Bush’s attitudes on the role of government. Continue reading
The Observer, April 21, 2001
Myron Magnet is not a politician and he speaks with the robust confidence of a theorist who knows he will never have to implement the social theories he espouses. From his offices at the influential neo-conservative think-tank, the Manhattan Institute, it is hard not to be beguiled by his argument that the persistent underclass that exists in America and Britain is a product not of failed economic policies and incentives, but of cultural attitudes. Continue reading
C-SPAN, July 6, 2000
Mr. Magnet talks about his book The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass, published by Encounter Books. The book explores the idea that culture, not economics, keeps people trapped in the underclass.
View the video on C-SPAN (01:03:05) …
Myron Magnet’s The Dream and the Nightmare argues that the radical transformation of American culture that took place in the 1960s brought today’s underclass — overwhelmingly urban, dismayingly minority — into existence. Lifestyle experimentation among the white middle class produced often catastrophic changes in attitudes toward marriage and parenting, the work ethic and dependency in those at the bottom of the social ladder, and closed down their exits to the middle class. Continue reading