In a recent column, Chris Powell expresses frustration at the madness of dealing only with the symptoms of a serious problem: fatherlessness.

We get that frustration very well. It has been more than eight years since we wrote about married-with-children households hitting an all-time low, and our advocacy for a bill that would establish a task force to study the causes of fatherlessness (read the joint favorable report here). It has been three years since Charles Murray’s important book “Coming Apart” described the devastation family brokenness has wrought almost entirely on poor and working-class communities. And, just this year, the New York Times graphically showed just how intensely the blue Northeast discourages marriage — which makes it especially inappropriate when out-of-state, liberal columnists with a simplistic notion of the cause of poverty (“lack of money to meet basic needs”: well, knock me down with a feather, poverty as a cash flow problem!) to pooh-pooh the idea of marriage encouragement initiatives without having given them any sort of chance or actually proposing concrete alternatives.

Well has it been said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Marriage is the most successful prosperity-generating program the government never came up with. How bad do class alienation and entrenched despair have to get before our leaders at all levels are willing to get serious about nursing it back to health?