Decline is a Choice

The California panel reviewing reparations has made several policy choices. Those choices indicate California, like much of the urban progressive core in America, has chosen to decline. Among the matters for which the panel has voiced support is an end to police enforcement of public nuisance laws such as public urination, minor trespass, sleeping on the streets, etc. Individually, they may seem like no big deal. In their totality, failing to enforce the small things will cause the big things to fester.

After Daniel Penny saved the passengers on the New York subway and, for his efforts, was indicted, one prominent progressive commentator tweeted that one does not expect to die on the subway, but one should expect to get accosted by crazy people. It was, after all, part of living in the city.

Except it did not used to be that way.

The left has worked very hard to vilify the “broken window theory” of crime. The idea is that enforcement of the law on small things prevents big things from festering. Despite the left’s adamant conviction that the theory is bad, one need only look at New York under Rudy Giuliani and New York today to see that the theory works. The basic gist of the theory is that if one sees a building with a broken window and that the broken window remains for some time, it signals that the building is vacant and unattended. Criminals will move in. What had been just an abandoned building becomes a headquarters for criminals, and crime takes hold. Therefore, enforce the laws on minor things to keep the major things from taking root. Pull up the poison ivy or fight kudzu.

Decline is a choice, and the left has decided to decline. They do so in the name of fighting racism. They’d prefer black families in the inner city live in crime-infested hell holes than young black gang members go to prison. They scream racism while demanding we not address the south side of Chicago because we are not black.

Republicans could offer up a law and order solution. I fear, however, they have become so obsessed with the gender side of the woke wars now the GOP is not speaking clearly on crime generally or on the economic blight of areas affected by progressive policies.

Progressives have made the choice that the small things should fester into the large things, and we should let our cities collapse in the name of social justice. The GOP can and should respond. To the extent they are, however, they are doing it badly. As much as we might want to argue at an intellectual level against transgenderism, the wokes, and intersectionality, the American people just want someone to tell them they’ll fund the police, lock up the bad guys, and get the urban campers off the streets.

Not everything needs to be an intellectual exercise, Republicans. Sometimes, you just have to talk to people like people and point out that decline is a choice, and our side does not choose to decline, unlike the left.