Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (born March 16, 1927 in Tulsa , Oklahoma , † March 26, 2003 in New York City ), also known as Pat or Dan by political friends , was a sociologist, US Senator for New York State and ambassador. He belonged to the Democratic Party . Moynihan was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 and re-elected in 1982, 1988, and 1994. Prior to joining the Senate, he served with John F. Kennedy , Lyndon B. Johnson , Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford . Among the Democrats, he was considered to be rather conservative .

Life

Born into a poor working-class family of Irish descent, he grew up with two siblings (a brother and a sister) in a ghetto area. His father, a docker by trade, was an alcoholic and drifter; when Daniel Patrick was six years old, he left the family. The mother was initially an unskilled worker, later she became a saloon owner, but the family still lived in poverty . As children, Daniel Patrick and his brother cleaned shoes to earn money for the family. As a teenager he worked as a dock worker.

Moynihan was a good student and won scholarships to several Catholic private schools. However, he didn't stay long. He received his high school diploma from Harlem High School. He studied for a year at the City College of New York , which at the time had no tuition fees. Then he dropped out of college and joined the army, where he served from 1944 to 1947. He then studied at Tufts University and as a Fulbright scholar at the London School of Economics .

Moynihan was married to Elizabeth Moynihan. They had three children, Timothy Patrick, Maura, and John Moynihan. He had two grandchildren, Michael Patrick Avedon and Zora Olea Moynihan. Moynihan's hobby was lacrosse .

Act

Moynihan has taught sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard , Wesleyan University, and Syracuse University . He published 19 books. The best known, Beyond the Melting Pot , is about the influence of ethnicity in the United States.

Moynihan had studied Five Families and La Vida by Oscar Lewis and Slavery by Stanley Elkins with a lasting impression . As a young sociologist he investigated the family structure in poor (black) families and published the Moynihan Report . In this report, he mainly deplores the fact that a quarter of all black children were born out of wedlock and a fifth of all black families had a wife as head of the family. This "family breakdown" led to social welfare dependence. Moynihan was in favor of a citizen allowance for families, but against aid for single mothers. He warned against the "man out of the house rule" of the AFDC program. According to this rule, a mother only received support for her children if there was no man able to work in the house.

From 1973 to 1975 Moynihan was the US Ambassador to India ; from 1975 to 1976 US Ambassador to the United Nations .

Moynihan was Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Kennedy and Johnson Governments. He worked on the war-on-poverty program.

Positions

As part of the so-called third pillar of NATO , a committee for the improvement of environmental conditions was set up in 1969 on the initiative of Richard Nixon ; As Nixon's representative, Moynihan named acid rain and the greenhouse effect as topics for the committee. The German Federal Government was rather skeptical about this, and environmental issues were increasingly dealt with at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, right up to the establishment of the IPCC .

As a Catholic, Moynihan was one of the few democrats who campaigned against abortion . He compared abortions at an advanced stage of pregnancy with the so-called partial birth procedure to infanticide . William Ryan accused Moynihan in his book " Blaming the Victim" of seeing the victim as guilty. Blacks are victims of racism and classism , but Moynihan treats them like perpetrators. Moynihan's concept of family was considered out of date by Ryan.

Honors

In 1966 Moynihan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1968 to the American Philosophical Society . In 1999 he received a Heinz Award . On 9 August 2000 handed US President Bill Clinton Moynihan, the Medal of Freedom ( "The Presidential Medal of Freedom"), the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Quotes

"The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no in considerable success. "

("The Department of State wanted the United Nations to prove completely ineffective, no matter what action it took. I was assigned this task, and I did it with no inconsiderable success.") (Referring to possible interventions in East Timor; as UN ambassador)

"A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families [...] never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority [...] that community asks for and gets chaos ... And it is richly deserved . "

(“A society that allows large numbers of young men to grow up in broken families [...] and never gain a stable relationship with male authority [...] this society asks for chaos and gets chaos ... And that is really deserved ")

(In response to the question: “Why should I work if I am going to just end up emptying slop jars?”) “That's a complaint you hear mostly from people who don't empty slop jars. This country has a lot of people who do exactly that for a living. And they do it well. It's not pleasant work, but it's a living. And it has to be done. Somebody has to go around and empty all those bed pans. And it's perfectly honorable work. There's nothing the matter with doing it. Indeed, there is a lot that is right about doing it, as any hospital patient will tell you. "
(In response to the question, “Why should I end up emptying bed bowls?”) “This is a complaint that you often hear from people who don't empty bed bowls themselves. In this country there are many people who live from this work. And they do it well. It's not a pleasant job, but it's a living. And it has to be done. Somebody has to go around and empty all these bed pans. And it is truly honorable work. It's no problem at all to do that. Indeed, there is much to be said for how any hospital patient will assure you. "
Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but nobody has the right to their own facts.

Fonts

with Nathan Glazer : Beyond the melting pot. The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1963.
(Ed.): On understanding poverty. Perspectives from the social sciences. Basic Books, New York a. a. 1969 (collection of essays on poverty).
Maximum feasible misunderstanding. Community action in the war on poverty. Free Press, New York 1969.
The politics of a guaranteed income. Random House, New York 1973.
The future of the family. Russell Sage Foundation, 2003.

literature

Peter Steinfels: The neoconservatives. The men who are changing America's politics. Simon and Schuster, New York 1980.
Lee Rainwater, William L. Yancey: The Moynihan report and the politics of controversy: a trans-action social science and public policy report. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., Et al. a.

Web links

Wikiquote: Daniel Patrick Moynihan - Quotes

Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the nndb (English)
Moynihan Report
Pat Moynihan, RIP (obituary by conservative publicist George Will, English)

More information

↑ The first two books are about the 'culture of poverty '. Lewis researched living conditions in Mexican slums. For the way of life he found there, he coined the term “culture of poverty”. According to Lewis, the way of life of the poor is shaped by patterns of thought and action that are passed on from generation to generation within the cultural unit. This culture of poverty is characterized by the fact that the poor strive for immediate satisfaction of their needs. They are not in a position to put a need aside in order to benefit from it later. For example, the poor did not invest in their education or in the education of their children. This means that the next generation will also be poor. According to Lewis, the only way to end poverty is through outside interventions, such as compensatory upbringing . Elkins argues in his book that slavery has made blacks dependent on mainstream white society. Consequently, the state must act actively to break this dependency. It is not enough to equate blacks with whites . Special programs would have to be created, such as compensatory education and affirmative action .

↑ Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration. In: The Atlantic , October 2015; Moynihan Report ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at DOL.gov. @1@ 2

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Kai F. Hünemörder : The Early History of the Global Environmental Crisis and the Formation of German Environmental Policy (1950–1973). Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-515-08188-7

^ Member History: Daniel P. Moynihan. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 18, 2018 .

^ A Dangerous Place. Little Brown, 1980, p. 247

^ Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures , 1986

↑ In Their Own Words . US News and World Report, May 26–2. June 2008.

↑ Faster than the facts allow. In: Spiegel online . November 6, 2012

personal data
SURNAME	Moynihan, Daniel Patrick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American diplomat and politician
DATE OF BIRTH	March 16, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tulsa , Oklahoma
DATE OF DEATH	March 26, 2003
Place of death	New York City

[1] The first two books are about the 'culture of poverty '. Lewis researched living conditions in Mexican slums. For the way of life he found there, he coined the term “culture of poverty”. According to Lewis, the way of life of the poor is shaped by patterns of thought and action that are passed on from generation to generation within the cultural unit. This culture of poverty is characterized by the fact that the poor strive for immediate satisfaction of their needs. They are not in a position to put a need aside in order to benefit from it later. For example, the poor did not invest in their education or in the education of their children. This means that the next generation will also be poor. According to Lewis, the only way to end poverty is through outside interventions, such as compensatory upbringing . Elkins argues in his book that slavery has made blacks dependent on mainstream white society. Consequently, the state must act actively to break this dependency. It is not enough to equate blacks with whites . Special programs would have to be created, such as compensatory education and affirmative action .