They live outside the margins of ordinary American life, isolated and unassimilated, a Third World society within a First World nation. Theirs is a Hobbesian universe where life is nasty, brutish and often cut short by violence, disease and drugs. They live lives without: mothers without husbands, men without work, families without homes, days without structure, neighborhoods without hope. They are America's Underclass, a disturbing daily reminder that American Democracy has not measured out liberty and justice for all.
Members of the Underclass are not the same as the traditional poor. About 30 million Americans live below the poverty line, but...