<P> Prof. Tony Judt, the late historian, said in reference to the earlier proposed title of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act that "a more Orwellian title would be hard to conceive" and attributed the decline in the popularity of the Great Society as a policy to its success, as fewer people feared hunger, sickness, and ignorance . Additionally, fewer people were concerned with ensuring a minimum standard for all citizens and social liberalism . </P> <P> Conservative Research Fellow at the Independent Institute James L. Payne followed this line of thinking when he wrote that "the war on poverty was a costly, tragic mistake (because)... abolishing poverty did not seem far - fetched to the activists...(and) it was a perspective that led to intolerance...The simple economic theory of poverty led to a single underlying principle for welfare programs...In adopting the handout approach for their programs, the war - on - poverty activists failed to notice--or failed to care--that they were ignoring over a century of theory and experience in the social welfare field...The war - on - poverty activists not only ignored the lessons of the past on the subject of handouts; they also ignored their own experience with the poor ." </P> <P> Thomas Sowell also criticized the War on Poverty's programs programs, writing "The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life ." </P> <P> Others took a different tack . In 1967, in his book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Martin Luther King "criticized Johnson's War on Poverty for being too piecemeal", saying that programs created under the "war on poverty" such as "housing programs, job training and family counseling" all had "a fatal disadvantage (because) the programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis...(and noted that) at no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived ." In his speech on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New City, King connected the war in Vietnam with the "war on poverty": </P>

The centerpiece of educational legislation enacted as part of the war on poverty was