The Column the Baltimore Sun Would Not Publish

WBAL Radio ^ | Friday, June 05, 2009 | Ron Smith

[11th_VA]

Here is the column that was submitted by Ron Smith, a weekly Baltimore Sun columnist, to the newspaper. However, The Sun decided not to run the piece today for various reasons. Decide for yourself whether the decision makers at The Sun made the right decision.

Because of all the reports I've read and conversations I've had on the radio this week about Baltimore's notorious violence being directed these days randomly at people going about their daily business even in the supposedly safe "touristy" areas of the city, I reached for my copy of Anthropologist Jack Weatherford's book, "Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?"

Weatherford has traveled just about everywhere in his long and distinguished career and during his research began to perceive that the modern world was near its end. He argues that cities, the centers of civilization, are inherently destructive. "They consume the areas around themselves," he writes, "and if they cannot find new materials, they die." Think of it this way: the discipline of archeology arose from what? From the study of dead cities, strewn about the landscape of the world. What kills them? He says the cause is the extravagant habits of consumption and destruction that are at the heart of civilization. Everything is eventually consumed. The forests are denuded. Water, plants, stone, metal, animals, even the land itself is used up. It took thousands of years to consume and destroy the birthplace of civilization in Mesopotamia, and then the pattern continued in the Mediterranean and Europe, with the eventual need to find vast new areas, the Americas and Australia, in order to obtain the resources to replace that which had been consumed.

That game is now over. What can be civilized has been. How, you might wonder, does this tie into the increasing violence in our big cities? I'll tell you. Jack Weatherford is an expert on tribal cultures. He has written books about the epic clash between the Native American and European cultures during the 300 years of warfare between the two. Civilized people have defeated the tribal peoples of the world, who have been killed or scattered. But the tribal people who survived have been moving en masse into the worlds' major urban areas. And as he notes, "Neither the classless society of communism nor the global village of capitalism managed to homogenize the world during the twentieth century." Group conflict, far from being eradicated, has been heightened in modern times. The nation-state swallowed the remaining tribal people but could not digest them.

And that brings us to this startling observation from Mr. Weatherford after spending some time doing field research in Washington, D.C.: "Nowhere in the world had I witnessed as much savagery, brutality, crime and cruelty as I did on the streets of the capital city of the United States." He worked at a bookstore. The clerk who worked at it before him was shot in the head and killed. The clerk who replaced him was beaten with a metal pipe and left for dead. "On the streets of Washington," he writes, "I saw forms of social organization and culture that I had never seen among any tribal people. Everywhere in the world, tribal life centers on the family and family units, but in the center cities of America, the family has broken down." The welfare state put the finishing touches on the destruction of the family.

In the fifteen years since his book was published, we can safely assume things have degenerated even more. Young males in the inner cities pursue their lives and interests separate from the females with whom they beget children. "Much of the male activity," Weatherford observes, "varies between idle boredom and fierce violence." The males coalesce into gangs that operate with warrior bravado. This is the reality: "Aside from a few exclusive and heavily guarded enclaves, the central city is home to the lost." And the lost are lashing out at the rest of us. Wherever uncontrolled crime appears, vigilantism soon follows.

"Soon," writes Weatherford, "it becomes difficult to distinguish one group from the other as the criminals and vigilantes both operate outside the law...in their struggle for control of the streets and the neighborhoods."

Strange things are happening. Unease is widespread. With good reason.

[11th_VA]

Ron has a radio talk show and publishes a weekly column in the Baltimore Sun - they refused to publish this one last week.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe”.
Thomas Jefferson

[Former Proud Canadian]

They didn’t publish it because they don’t trade in the truth.

[Tax Government]

The problem I have with this article is this: it glorifies the Europeans, and claims they brought light to a troubled, tribal world. Ain’t so. The struggle in America is between people who are plugged-in to the modern economy and those on the fringe. Those on the fringe may have other kinds of identification — reborn tribalism, I suppose.

[OCCASparky]

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify you, and I realized that you're not actually mammal. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you liberals do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Liberals are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’m trying to comment, but my first three attempts would get me banned. So this is all I can say.

[frogjerk]

Because of all the reports I've read and conversations I've had on the radio this week about Baltimore's notorious violence being directed these days randomly at people going about their daily business even in the supposedly safe "touristy" areas of the city,

Since I will be traveling to Baltimore in a couple of weeks, someone please bring me up to date.

[jimfree]

Starring Kurt Russell and Adrienne Barbeaux.

[pie_eater]

Roving gangs of 10 to 25 youths randomly attack (but don’t rob) white people in and around the downtown area. They’ve increased the police presence in the downtown inner-harbor area and that’s quieted things down a little. Just don’t wander around alone and you should be OK. Safety in numbers.

[conservativeharleyguy]

There’re valid reasons that many locals call it Bodymore Murderland.

[SJSAMPLE]

The locals call it “Bulletmore, Murderland” for a reason.

[Goldsborough]

I take it there is no concealed carry law to help keep the miscreants at bay?

[SJSAMPLE]

Same group that control local DC politics.
Nope.

[doodad]

BaltiMordor

[Paladin2]

‘Rats. Cornered.

[libs_kma]

Good thing I can live my entire life and be happy without ever setting foot in Baltimore, Detroit or Philadelphia, because it's not gonna happen.

More liberal train wrecks to follow....

[Tahoe3002]

Roving gangs of 10 to 25 youths...

Seems like a little ‘open season’ is needed on these miscreants. Yep, part of the vigilantism, he speaks about in the article. Only when fear is engaged do we see any reaction in the gangs. They must learn to fear, in the same way they want to invoke fear in regular people.

A lot of the bravado evaporates when one is looking down the stovepipe of a 45ACP.

[ridesthemiles]

“Mad Max” coming to an area near you......

[Noumenon]

If you want a really good in-detail take on what this article tries to accomplish, then i highly recommend Lee Harris' The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West

Harris' rephrased question, "Does reason commit suicide when it blinds itself to the reality and the power of the irrational?", presents the West's primary problem: its leaders live under the delusion that everybody looks at the world the same way and that everyone wants the same things. They don't.

Harris points out that Islam is a civilization-destroying meme that insulates and inoculates itself perfectly against any sort of ‘reform’. Reform Islam and it is no longer Islam. It’s just that simple. For the same reasons, there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’. That’s a contradiction in terms, a pleasant fiction that so many of us desperately wish to believe.

Islam wants us either converted, enslaved or dead. Those are their ‘choices’ - as their history so clearly shows. For an exhaustive account of just how bloody and atrocity-ridden Islamic history has been, try Andrew Bostoms' The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims This is an unflinching look at the murderous, civilization-destroying history of Islamic conquests.

Harris' final question is troubling: do we in the West retain sufficient 'civilizational will' to defend ourselves. The question is troubling, because the issue is very much in doubt. The products of our educational system are for the most part whiny, narcissistic fools with a huge sense of entitlement - hardly a warrior amongst them. Educational curriculae boil down to indoctrination in socialism, self-hatred and sheepery. Fro proof, I submit the current administration. For further proof, I submit the rising tide of Islamization in Europe.

[pie_eater]

A few years back a homeowner shot and killed a thief who broke into his shed and was in the process of robbing him. Baltimore City arrested and prosecuted the homeowner and he’s now in jail for murder.

Vigilante justice in Baltimore City would merely result in the prosecution of the vigilantes.