THE MORNING RANT: Where is the Conservative Alternative to the Collapse of Municipal Government?

Last Wednesday, both Ace and Joe Mannix had great posts in which they sought to explain why Democrat-run municipalities are in a state of failure and collapse, especially in regards to the human-caused mass casualty event in Maui. They both had different explanations, and both of their analyses are true.

As I read those two essays, it reminded me of one of my great frustrations in the current political climate – there is a crying need for “municipal conservatism.” I now stand in awe of what Rudy Giuliani did as mayor of New York City, yet at the time I was critical of him for not being conservative enough. People like me in the 1990s thought conservatism was simply “lower taxes” and “less government.” We were wrong - that’s not what New Yorkers wanted. What they did want was civil order and effective government. Rudy delivered.

Let’s take a quick look at a snippet or two from Ace’s and Mannix’s pieces:

“Some Thoughts on Why Leftists Can Only Destroy and Never Create” [Ace – 8/23/2023]

A few days ago, I wrote that Democratic governance is willfully incompetent because they simply are not concerned about the mundane-but-crucial tasks of basic management, instead choosing to focus only on quixotic campaigns to "save the world" and "end poverty." These goals are unaccomplishable, and are stupid, but they feel like heroic causes.

In Maui, instead of making sure that their aging power lines were reinforced against being blown down by winds, and that highly-flammable grasses were cleared out from beneath these powerlines in case they did collapse, Democrat officials spent their money on Green New Deal boondoggles.

“Wednesday Morning Rant” [Joe Mannix – 8/23/2023]

As the details about the disastrous Maui fire continue to unfold, many people are left wondering how the hell a foul-up this spectacular is possible. How did everything go so wrong at every level of the response? Why did Maui have to wait for water authorization? Why were the emergency sirens not activated? Why was traffic allegedly blocked from leaving on the only good road out? Assuming that all of what we've heard is true, how did so much go wrong?

I think that the sad conclusion is that, in reality, nothing went wrong. Not officially. Everyone likely followed every guideline, rule, regulation and requirement. Procedural compliance was probably quite good. What apparently nobody did, however, was the single most important thing: think. The environment in which they operate has been designed to eliminate the need to think and ensure compliance instead.

I have often described cities such as Portland and Minneapolis as being run by “Pol Pot Mayors,” that is, they are run by revolutionaries who seek to destroy all of the old order. They may talk about a utopia they are trying to create, but they are mainly just destroying their cities, intentionally, much like Pol Pot destroyed and depopulated Phnom Penh as a step in reorganizing society. Ace’s essay describes these type of Democrat-run municipalities.

Meanwhile Joe Mannix gave the example of Flint, MI where bureaucratic sclerosis in the manner of traditional Democrat governance brought about its water crisis. Municipalities like the ones Mannix describes might not be dysfunctional because they are chasing the green agenda, rather they are in collapse because of graft and patronage jobs for people with no capability to solve or prevent problems.

There is a desperate need for a new era of Rudy Giulianis.

We conservatives have abandoned the cities (and that includes me) and we mock city-dwellers for not voting Republican, yet we are not making a pitch for what we can do to make cities liveable again. Here is something I wrote before, so rather than rewrite it as if it’s an original thought, I’m going to plagiarize myself, because I do want to keep making this point.

Although Democrat mayors in the 20th century may have been liberal, they generally wanted their cities to be successful, prosperous, and orderly. But now we suddenly find that Democrat mayors and councils in many major cities are committed to deconstructing western civilization, and to prove their commitment they are aggressively trying to burn down their own cities and destroy all social order. It’s unthinkable, but it’s happening.

It used to be that Democrat mayors and city councils were all about jobs programs, generous salaries and benefits for municipal employees, and a smorgasbord of services for residents. In exchange, the taxes and corruption of the power structure was tolerated, but citizens always felt they could rely on a certain level of policing and civil order. Republicans, by contrast, offered “limited government” and lower taxes, and they were routed at the polls for decades.

With our major cities now boarded up and in ruins, this is an ideal time for Republicans to assert a “municipal conservatism” that our dying cities are desperately in need of. But the worn-out, libertarian, anti-government Republican platform of old will not fix the anarchy that has overtaken our cities. Heck, the left’s demand to abolish the police could itself be defined as “anti government”.

What Republicans need to offer is city services done right: Policing; Patriotism; Cleanliness; Safety; Usable parks; Schools that teach the “Three Rs”; Anti-vagrancy; Pro-small business; Pro-church; Pro-America. The opportunity is huge because Democrats now oppose all of those building blocks of civilization.

Sure, let’s go ahead and promise to clean up the graft, to eliminate full-retirement for 50-year-olds, to reduce red tape, to replace pensions with 401ks, etc. But above all else, let’s promise and deliver a return to civil order in our cities. There is a huge demand for it.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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