[NOTE: Here’s a recommended article by Andrew C. McCarthy entitled, “The President Has the Constitutional Power to Restore Order. He Must Act.”]
We hardly needed any more proof that our society is in terrible trouble. But we’ve gotten it in the failure of government authorities to restore order in riot-torn cities a timely fashion. That’s one of the most basic functions of government, and too many people have lost either the will to do it or the skill to do it.
That loss of will can be a result of leftist ideology (including the cultivation of guilt in those with “privilege”) or of cowardice, although I suppose the two are not mutually exclusive. But civil society requires that people feel a sense of basic safety in their homes, their workplaces, and their property, or it descends into chaos because there never will be enough police to ensure safety in an environment in which those things are not generally respected.
That used to be a universally accepted truth. Not so much anymore.
Some time ago I read an article on the history of the night watchman. Prior to reading it, I had imagined night watchmen to be picturesque figures, lanterns in hand, but I had never thought deeply about their function, which was to be the first policemen back in the days when city streets at night were not otherwise illuminated:
It had been recognized for centuries that the coming of darkness to the unlit streets of a town brought a heightened threat of danger, and that the night provided cover to the disorderly and immoral, and to those bent on robbery or burglary or who in other ways threatened physical harm to people in the streets and in their houses.
The anxieties that darkness gave rise to had been met by the formation [in London] of a night watch in the 13th century, and by the rules about who could use the streets after dark. These rules had for long been underpinned in London and other towns by the curfew, the time (announced by the ringing of a bell) at which the gates closed and the streets were cleared. Only people with good reason to be abroad could then travel through the city. Anyone outside at night without reason or permission was suspicious and potentially criminal…
During the 1820s, mounting crime levels and increasing political and industrial disorder prompted calls for reform, led by Sir Robert Peel, which culminated in the demise of the watchmen and their replacement by a uniformed metropolitan police force.
Note, also, that the cities had gates that could be closed.
Our modern police forces patrol the streets in vehicles, but the police forces’ numbers and training and the politics of blue cities often make the police alone inadequate to deal with a large group of rioters bent on destruction. It doesn’t matter if the majority of people in the crowd are bona fide “peaceful protestors” if a significant and dangerous number are not, and if authorities wink at the violence and allow it to happen.
That endangers everyone – black, white, or purple. It also sends a signal to anyone else bent on destruction that it will be tolerated and then it’s open season on the rest of the population.
It is intolerable that we have people in the desperate situation of the woman in this video, crying because her neighborhood has been destroyed. It didn’t have to be this way. But as soon as the police station in Minneapolis was allowed to burn, that was the sign that told the rioters, the nihilists, the sociopaths, whoever in that crowd was looking to destroy and harm, that there would be no negative consequences and few risks to their own hides from their behavior.
And so, as they used to say, burn baby burn. If anyone thinks he or she is immune because of leftist sympathies, or race, or anything else, think again. The perpetrators do not care.
And the press is actively engaged in the struggle, at least in the sense of words, and they’re not on the side of the enforcement of order. Their support and sympathy for the rioters (unless, of course, they can foster the idea that they’re from the far-right) can be overt, but more commonly it’s subtle. For an example of the more subtle type, we have this AP article published at Politico [emphasis mine]:
Cheering protesters torched a Minneapolis police station that the department abandoned as three days of violent protests spread to nearby St. Paul and angry demonstrations flared across the U.S over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer kneeled on his neck.
A police spokesman confirmed late Thursday that staff had evacuated the 3rd Precinct station, the focus of many of the protests, “in the interest of the safety of our personnel” shortly after 10 p.m. Livestream video showed the protesters entering the building, where fire alarms blared and sprinklers ran as blazes were set.
Yes, of course there were protests, but those who set the fires were not just “protestors” any more (if they ever were to begin with) when they committed this act. Minneapolis’ youthful mayor later took responsibility for ordering the police station evacuated. At a press conference, when a reporter asked him, ““What’s the plan here?”, Frey answered “With regard to?”, as though it wasn’t obvious what the reporter might be referring to.
In that entire AP article, fires are mentioned many times but quite often there is no agent responsible for setting them. On reading certain parts of the article, a person might be forgiven for thinking that a bunch of buildings in Minneapolis were loaded with old oil-soaked rags waiting to spontaneously combust.
At least one person is quoted as being upset about the fires and the people who set them, and wasn’t afraid to say it:
“We’re burning our own neighborhood,” said a distraught Deona Brown, a 24-year-old woman standing with a friend outside the precinct station, where a small group of protesters were shouting at a dozen or so stone-faced police officers in riot gear. “This is where we live, where we shop, and they destroyed it.” No officers could be seen beyond the station.
“What that cop did was wrong, but I’m scared now,” Brown said.
As well she might be.
The AP writers followed that quote from Brown with this one, which gives you a good idea of the attitude of at least one (and probably a lot more) of the perpetrators:
Others in the crowd saw something different in the wreckage.
Protesters destroyed property “because the system is broken,” said a young man who identified himself only by his nickname, Cash, and who said he had been in the streets during the violence. He dismissed the idea that the destruction would hurt residents of the largely black neighborhood.
“They’re making money off of us,” he said angrily of the owners of the destroyed stores. He laughed when asked if he had joined in the looting or violence. “I didn’t break anything.”
Simplistic leftist rhetoric, and laughter at the plight of the residents. And he doesn’t feel the least bit afraid of what might happen to him as a result.
Why am I focusing so much on the way the article is written? Because it’s symptomatic of the role of the press today, which feasts off the crisis and yet refuses to describe it properly, continuing to play the PC language game for political reasons.
The larger message has already been received, and not just in Minneapolis, but across the nation: most local and state authorities in blue states refuse to do anything effective to stop those who would destroy. And it’s much easier to destroy than to build.
[NOTE: See this for some more choice words from the mayors of American’s blue cities. And the photos that happen to be displayed there are mostly of white “protestors,” many of whom are attacking high-end shopping districts and scrawling anti-capitalist slogans. Antifa-style class warfare.]
