Posted on 04/29/2015 12:05:50 AM PDT by grundle
In Baltimore, as the National Guard steps in, curfews are imposed, and business owners pick up the pieces from their burned-out, looted stores, let’s not forget why one more American city has been torn apart by racial violence. Blue America has failed at social justice. It has failed at equality. It has failed at accountability. Its competing constituencies are engaged in street battles, and any exploration of “root causes” must necessarily include decades of failed policies — all imposed by steadfastly Democratic mayors and city leaders.
Are the riots caused by the Baltimore Police Department’s “documented history” of abuse? Which party has run Baltimore and allowed its police officers to allegedly run amok? Going deeper, which American political movement lionizes public-employee unions, fiercely protecting them from even the most basic reform? Public-employee unions render employee discipline difficult and often impossible. Jobs are functionally guaranteed for life, and rogue officers can count on the best representation money can buy — courtesy of Blue America.
Are the riots caused by inequality? Orioles’ owner Peter Angelos’s son, John, made waves on the left with his “tweetstorm” stating that his “greater source of personal concern, outrage, and sympathy” was not with “one night’s property damage” but with a litany of economic outrages that he claims have “plunged tens of millions of hard-working Americans into economic devastation.” Mother Jones summed up his message by declaring, “At the end of the day, it comes down to social and economic inequality.”
The more “blue” a city is, the greater its level of income inequality.
So let’s examine inequality. It turns out that the more “blue” a city is, the greater its level of income inequality — inequality compounded by a lack of affordable housing. This chart, from The Atlantic, is telling:
Translation: As a city gets increasingly blue, its housing gets increasingly unaffordable.
There is a deep literature tying liberal residents to illiberal housing policies that create affordability crunches for the middle class. In 2010, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn published a study of California cities, which found that liberal metros issued fewer new housing permits. The correlation held over time: As California cities became more liberal, he observed, they built fewer homes.
Are the riots caused by an expansive government, which uses police officers as the tip of the spear to enforce social reform? The expansive regulatory state criminalizes everything from legitimate crimes to selling “loosies,” the individual cigarettes that triggered the New York City police’s fatal encounter with Eric Garner. In a powerful post the very liberal Tah-Nehisi Coates (who is presently condemning calls for nonviolence in Baltimore as a “ruse”) decried “the belief that all our social problems can be solved with force.” Coates continued:
Peel back the layers of most of the recent police shootings that have captured attention and you will find a broad societal problem that we have looked at, thrown our hands up, and said to the criminal-justice system, “You deal with this.” . . . Was Walter Scott’s malfunctioning third-brake light really worth a police encounter? Should the state repeatedly incarcerate him for not paying child support? Do we really want people trained to fight crime dealing with someone who’s ceased taking medication? Does the presence of a gun really improve the chance of peacefully resolving a drug episode? In this sense, the police — and the idea of police reform — are a symptom of something larger. The idea that all social problems can, and should, be resolved by sheer power is not limited to the police. In Atlanta, a problem that began with the poor state of public schools has now ending by feeding more people into the maw of the carceral state.
The regulatory state necessarily creates more interactions between armed law enforcement and citizens. It fosters resentment. It creates the possibility for confusion, mistakes, and petty acts of violence and vengeance. Yet the Left never seems to learn. Even now deep-Blue Hawaii wants to raise the legal smoking age to 21. How long before there’s a tragic incident tied to confrontation between a police officer and a 19-year-old smoker?
For decades, the Left has ruled America’s great cities, presiding over often-unaccountable police departments, denying access to affordable housing, and dramatically increasing the state’s intrusion into citizens’ lives. In fact, the Left’s diverse urban centers are at the heart of the so-called coalition of the ascendant that will allegedly guarantee liberal domination for years to come.
Yet now one part of that coalition is throwing rocks and burning cars, and another part of that coalition is locking shields and wielding pepper spray. And a third segment — the urban intellectual elite — can’t decide whether to justify or condemn the riots. It’s blue versus blue in America’s cities. Their one-party rule has failed.
— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.
The left have destroyed more cities than nuclear weapons.
To unbelievers, the truth of God’s word is a hateful thing.
Those who can’t create, destroy.
(democrats)
I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what you mean here. Care to expand?
The word of God is good for our instruction. As in proverbs, fools reject it. A seeker of Christ sees and acknowledges the wisdom of the verse.
Wow. Are you mentally ill? What does that have to do with the subject at hand?
I am not, thanks for asking.
I was commenting to the poster of the verse in post three. Not to you.
Well ok. But I still think you have some mental problems. Please see a doctor. That is all. Have a nice day.
Opinions are like buttholes, everyone has one and they all stink. Keep yours to yourself.
If I can dare express opinion
you appear sane, to me.
Perhaps coming from me that’s not the best recommend
but if so, then that would be due to my own limitations,
not yours.
Regardless of what all else, the comment you made was rational enough.
Thank you, I thought so as well.
I think his statement of truth is apt in that liberal cities only want encouragement in what they do, the enlightening truth being not seen - notwithstanding your own reaction. You do not have to call someone mentally ill.
To unbelievers, the truth of God’s word is a hateful thing.
Need we say more? Pretty prophetic in terms of what makes a troll doing personal attacks.
This is actually a liberal fascist initiative designed to nationalize under federal authority, all state and local police departments. It is a federal usurpation of the Constitution based on an unconstitutional use of the Civil Rights Act, to usurp State government.
Soon we will likely have a national liberal leftist police organization, engaged in community work, invading all of our lives on a daily basis, just like the nationalist socialists perpetrated on Germany in 1928 with their "SS," now we in America must cower before the new Obama SS, brought on by the likes of Obama, Holder,Lynch,who through selective prosecution of the law ( looters in Baltimore, what looters?), will create one law for minorities and another for white folk.
And what do we get in the end? Obama-land:
The up side is that the more leftists who go down the hole, the fewer there will be to bother true patriots of the Republic, or what will be left of it. It will be that or Civil War.
Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright.
If you look at the reference given, it seems to be the prophecy out of Jeremiah 50:32.
In the passage verses 21-32, the literal prophecy is against the empire of Babylon, that conquered and enslaved the Jews of Judea and deported most of them to Babylon (now Iraq), breaking down Solomon's Temple. Jeremiah predicts that the Medes and Persians (now Iran)will in turn overcome and enslave the Babylonian Empire (which later did happen in Daniel's time).
Does this passage have a figurative-literal application to America in our time?
That would be more than a bit of a stretch (the Iran/Iraq conflict might not be), but maybe EN has an explanation of how it might apply to riots in our cities today.
(Me just horning in uninvited -- either of you can tell me to butt out and I won't be offended)
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