Retrospective on The Great Society

The American Conservative re-runs an essay from a few years back which recalls LBJ's "Great Society" legislative outburst of the mid-'60's.  The piece points out one horrific result of the package:  the demolition of the family--particularly of the black family.

But there's something else worthy of your attention here.

...Johnson’s vision was to create an attendant kaleidoscopic role for Washington. Power shifted inexorably from the people to Washington’s managerial class, a growing blob of a bureaucracy. And there was another leverage point that made Johnson’s Great Society possible, though it wasn’t really related in philosophical terms. That was the great, post-Civil War legacy of Jim Crow laws in the South and blatant racial discrimination that mocked the great American hallmark of equality before the law. Growing numbers of Americans believed that it was time to end this blot of national hypocrisy, and that the long arm of the federal government was needed to accomplish it. Johnson set out to leverage that sentiment to enact the most far-reaching civil-rights legislation in a century, including the 1964 anti-discrimination legislation and the politically potent Voting Rights Act of 1965..

Johnson’s Great Society garnered strong support not only from most Democrats but also from large numbers of Republicans, including the Senate Republican leader, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who embraced the philosophy of big government.

The promises emanating from the nation’s capital sometimes verged on the mystical: cities large and small would be built and rebuilt with the federal government as the grand marshal of the funding parade. The poor would no longer be poor. Public schools would be gleaming and bright. Families would feel unprecedented stability under Uncle Sam’s benevolent attentions. The promises seemed endless.

Ironically, Democratic liberals expressed the most initial misgivings about Johnson’s vision. But they soon climbed aboard what quickly became a governmental gravy train of federal spending built upon the central warning of the Great Society: that if the government was not expanded to address these perceived problems, national chaos would ensue, especially in the urban core. Racial tension had been building since the late 1950s. Johnson portrayed his Great Society as the antidote to this brewing chaos....

There was Watts, then several other race riots, including in Milwaukee.

Question:  isn't it conveeeeeeeeeeenient that racial troubles seem to occur when Big Government wants MORE Big Government?

If you see a pattern, there's a reason.