The debate continued, unresolved, until 1834, when England set a new course: it decided to stigmatize the able-bodied dependent poor. They would be deemed “less eligible” for assistance and called paupers. They would receive relief only if they worked for it, in a poorhouse. This “had a shock effect that was very real,” writes the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb in a new collection of essays, “The De-Moralization of Society.” The number of paupers “decreased substantially after the passage of the law.” The money spent on poverty declined from 6.7 million pounds to 4.5 million pounds per year, on average, during the decade in which the law was passed.

Himmelfarb, a member of the first family of American neoconservatism (her husband is the author and editor Irving Kristol; her son is William Kristol, the GOP strategist), provides much of the intellectual ballast for Republican efforts to abolish the current welfare system. Thoughtful conservatives like the political scientist James Q. Wilson propose institutions that sound a lot like poorhouses (though they dare not use the word). Wilson speaks of “requiring young unmarried mothers to live in group homes with their children under adult supervision as a condition of receiving public assistance.” Less scrupulous sorts merely would cut them off. There is expedience and a vindictive tinge to this, and also a touch of what William Kristol has called “conservative utopianism.” All you have to do, the argument goes, is change the incentives and the sexually irresponsible culture of poverty will evaporate. All you have to do is abolish the “bureaucratic welfare state,” and private charities will rush to attend the most desperate cases. There is, no doubt, some truth to this. There is also moral justification: it is wrong to subsidize illegitimacy. But I suspect conservatives are overestimating government’s ability to influence behavior – just as liberals have in the past.

As they tackled dependency, the Victorians had two distinct advantages that do not exist now: a rapidly expanding economy and – far more important – a universal and unequivocal moral code. In any case, the problem was less severe. The anarchy wasn’t so pervasive. Rates of illegitimacy were halved in the 19th century – but they declined from 7 percent to less than 4. Today there are whole slum neighborhoods where traditional family life has ceased to exist – and levels of criminality that would have astonished Malthus on his darkest day. The cause of this vast, depressing moral collapse isn’t only government handouts. Nor is it, as liberals argue, the loss of manufacturing jobs. There’s also television. There is predatory marketing. There is a mass culture that has descended to the most primal common denominator.

Colin Powell has been warning audiences about “the incredible trash” on daytime television, the latest raunchy twist in talk shows. Last week, for example, there was: “One-Night Stands” on Jerry Springer, “Jilted Lovers Beg to Be Taken Back” on Ricki Lake, “Women Obsessed With Their Looks” on Jenny Jones. On Montel Williams, a teenage girl and her mother discussed their desire to sleep with the same 22-year-old man. The girl looked at her mother and said, “She loves sex.” The mother allowed that she did, especially with younger men. The younger man in question was then produced and asked to choose between the mother and daughter (some shred of dignity prevented him from going along with this outrage). In between, there were ads for sleazy lawyers soliciting personal damage suits – to say nothing of the usual run of inducements to spend rather than save, to “just do it” rather than think about it first. Nothing shattering: just another week in the wasteland. But television is the only sustained communication our society has with the underclass. It is the most powerful message we send. And it’s not likely, in such an environment, your average pregnant teen is going to catch the moral nuances if she is cut off. It’s only going to seem vindictive. (And racist, if she’s black.) The consequences of such a policy are unimaginable.

Which is not to say that we should continue to subsidize immorality. But the current focus on the minority of a minority – the small percentage of women on welfare who are chronically dependent – is too narrow for comfort. The problem will not be solved until Montel Williams – to name just one – wakes up one morning and realizes that no respectable person is willing to be seen in his presence, that he will be a pariah until he stops putting the garbage on the air. That isn’t likely to occur in the current legislative session. And it can’t be done through censorship. And it won’t happen merely by changing the behavior of the poor. It requires a broad recognition that civilization is fragile and we are slip-sliding toward turpitude. It requires liberals to acknowledge that morality is not relative – and conservatives to admit that enterprise must have limits. It is not so easy to “hold disgraceful” the dependent poor if the rest of society is shameless.