"That's Not What We Meant to Do"

Paper Summary:

Welfare reform, the 'mainstreaming' of the mentally ill and mentally challenged, affirmative action for historically discriminated against groups, greater openness to useful and deserving immigrants suffering political injustice in their native lands and effective campaign finance reforms are all common liberal rallying issues. This paper shows however, that by pairing his analysis of what such legally propelled reform measures were supposed to do, in terms of changing society, with how they actually functioned in the American political reality, Steven M. Gillon places the blame squarely on the heads of several bodies. By examining Gillon's book "That's Not What we Meant to Do: Reform and its Unintended Consequences in the 20th Century," the paper shows how he blames legislatures, legislators, the expectations of the American polity as well the laws themselves, for the failure of these movements and the laws they generated to have their intended consequences in American society.

From the Paper:

"For instance, the wide-scale integration and education of a generation of immigrant and lower-class young men that was created by the GI Bills of the 1940's was unexpected. Aiding mothers with dependant children was supposed to be cheaper than using charities or aid societies. Thus, welfare reform favoring aid to needy children was quite a popular stance during the Great Depression, when many families faced the prospect of losing everything they possessed, and many women were left widows without the ability to work, or employers who were willing to hire them to work."

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