Then and now

In City Journal Theodore Dalrymple remembers traveling from his safe native London to New York City, which 40 or 50 years ago had a reputation of being unsafe to walk around in.

Just under a half-century later, the level of civility in the two cities has switched: New York now feels safer than London. I have in recent years enjoyed walking dozens of city blocks after midnight in Manhattan without apprehension; I would hesitate these days to walk such a distance in London after midnight. Some London boroughs have more robberies in a month than all of Great Britain did in a year a century ago.

Differences in policy almost surely produced this reversal of fortune in the two great cities, at least as far as crime is concerned. New York decided that the “root cause” of crime is the criminal’s decision to commit it, which, in turn, is strongly influenced by the likely consequences to him of doing so, a theory easy to understand. London adhered to the theory, propounded by criminologists, that the root causes of crime are multifactorial and so complex as to be almost incomprehensible—vast social forces the direction of which somehow must change if crime is to fall. In other words, New York treated criminals and would-be criminals as individuals with powers of reflection and decision; London treated them as inanimate objects, mere vectors of forces. Contrary to first impressions, New York’s approach was more respectful of people than London’s, which, quite apart from its practical failure, led to all manner of equivocation, special pleading, dishonesty, condescension toward perpetrator and victim alike, and confusion as to the proper role of the police. As violence rose, the police in London (and elsewhere in Britain) increasingly took on the appearance of military occupiers instead of the traditional unarmed civilian force that they had hitherto been; or, as one commentator put it, they became paramilitary social workers, more concerned to protect the feelings of certain designated groups than the lives and property of all. The police became bullying without efficacy, the worst possible combination; and the confusion of roles led to their demoralization. If London should learn from New York, then New York should learn from London, the power of bad example being as great as that of good.

Dalrymple has also traveled to other American cities, such as Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans and Los Angeles. He offers his views of each. For example, Detroit.

...the fate of Detroit is a powerful reminder, if such were needed, that foolish and corrupt policies — and the city pursued many, from solvency-eroding public-worker pensions to vituperative racial politics that drove out the middle class — can destroy any degree of prosperity and bring ruin to multitudes.

Read more here.

Keep voting for the same thing, keep getting the same thing.

Kevin Williamson writes at National Review,

American cities are by and large Democratic-party monopolies, monopolies generally dominated by the so-called progressive wing of the party. The results have been catastrophic, and not only in poor black cities such as Baltimore and Detroit. Money can paper over some of the defects of progressivism in rich, white cities such as Portland and San Francisco, but those are pretty awful places to be non-white and non-rich, too: Blacks make up barely 9 percent of the population in San Francisco, but they represent 40 percent of those arrested for murder, and they are arrested for drug offenses at ten times their share of the population. Criminals make their own choices, sure, but you want to take a look at the racial disparity in educational outcomes and tell me that those low-income nine-year-olds in Wisconsin just need to buck up and bootstrap it?

...Yes, Baltimore seems to have some police problems. But let us be clear about whose fecklessness and dishonesty we are talking about here: No Republican, and certainly no conservative, has left so much as a thumbprint on the public institutions of Baltimore in a generation. Baltimore’s police department is, like Detroit’s economy and Atlanta’s schools, the product of the progressive wing of the Democratic party enabled in no small part by black identity politics. This is entirely a left-wing project, and a Democratic-party project.

When will the Left be held to account for the brutality in Baltimore — brutality for which it bears a measure of responsibility on both sides? There aren’t any Republicans out there cheering on the looters, and there aren’t any Republicans exercising real political power over the police or other municipal institutions in Baltimore. Community-organizer — a wretched term — Adam Jackson declared that in Baltimore “the Democrats and the Republicans have both failed.” Really? Which Republicans? Ulysses S. Grant? Unless I’m reading the charts wrong, the Baltimore city council is 100 percent Democratic.

...The other Democratic monopolies aren’t looking too hot, either. We’re sending Atlanta educators to prison for running a criminal conspiracy to hide the fact that they failed, and failed woefully, to educate the children of that city. Isolated incident? Nope: Atlanta has another cheating scandal across town at the police academy. Who is being poorly served by the fact that Atlanta’s school system has been converted into crime syndicate? Mostly poor, mostly black families. Who is likely to suffer from any incompetents advanced through the Atlanta police department by its corrupt academy? Mostly poor, mostly black people. Who suffers most from the incompetence of Baltimore’s Democratic mayor? Mostly poor, mostly black families — should they feel better that she’s black? Who suffers most from the incompetence and corruption of Baltimore’s police department? Mostly poor, mostly black families. And it’s the same people who will suffer the most from the vandalism and pillaging going on in Baltimore, too.

...The evidence suggests very strongly that the left-wing, Democratic claques that run a great many American cities — particularly the poor and black cities — are not capable of running a school system or a police department. They are incompetent, they are corrupt, and they are breathtakingly arrogant. Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore — this is what Democrats do.

And the kids in the street screaming about “inequality”? Somebody should tell them that the locale in these United States with the least economic inequality is Utah, i.e. the state farthest away from the reach of the people who run Baltimore. Keep voting for the same thing, keep getting the same thing.

Read more here.