Wednesday Morning Rant

The Left is defined by predictability. They are so predictable that they put the Cesium clock at NIST to shame. Once the Left latches onto some rationalization or another, it will never, for any reason, ever back down from it. Whatever the idea was, no amount of evidence or counter-evidence will ever change the position. After the position is taken and codified, it is immutable. At most, the Left will abandon one implementation of an idea - but never the idea itself.

Once of these ideas that never, ever goes away is the absurdist notion that creating officially approved venues for criminal activity will reduce that criminal activity outside of those venues. Ace mentioned a new one on this front yesterday, where some cities are making designated venues for wilding teens in the hopes that it will be appealing enough to prevent the feral youth from committing crimes elsewhere. This is absurd, of course, but it is also utterly unsurprising. This is always the answer to crimes committed by preferred groups.

The list of this exact thing is very long. It is always the same progression:
1. A type of crime gets out hand
2. The criminals engaging in the crime are in preferred groups, so the Left declares that prosecuting the crime is racist, sexist, classist, ageist, jingoist or whatever "ist" fits the bill.
3. The crime is ignored
4. People get mad that their towns and cities are being ruined by the crime
5. The Left proposes a plan. It is either:
- Legalizing the crime in one place to contain the problem without being "ists" of some kind
- Something entirely unrelated to the crime, justified through a blatant lie about motivations
6. The plan is enacted
7. The plan fails
8. The Left declares victory

Rinse and repeat. It progresses like fine Swiss clockwork, every time. Specific cases of it have even become memes. Midnight Basketball, anyone? That was the same thing.

So were "legal walls." Remember those? That was when cities would - and sometimes still do - put up big concrete walls specifically for vandals to tag. The idea was the same: provide a legal place to perform illegal activity, thus transforming it from crime into non-crime. The thesis behind that was that graffiti is about art, rather than vandalism. If the city just provides an outlet for these brilliant artists, vandalism will disappear. So the walls went up. The walls got tagged. Vandalism didn't decrease. All the "legal walls" did was create another graffiti-covered surface. Graffiti is stopped by promptly cleaning it up (reduced benefit to the tagger) and ticketing and arresting - and prosecuting - vandals (increased risk to the tagger). The vandalism is the point, and "legal walls" don't scratch the itch. But the "Legal Walls" get tagged, so declare victory.

"Needle exchanges" and official subsidized flophouses drug-use "safe spaces" are the same thing, too, and share the same basic premise. By moving the illegal activity to a safe and sanctioned location, they say, it will be reduced elsewhere. So cities hand out needles and provide non-enforcement zones to junkies. They get used. Needles still litter the streets and junkies still shoot up in parks because none of them are being arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned or otherwise institutionalized. But the needle exchanges are busy and the flophouses are full, so declare victory.

This always goes the same way because, despite all the Leftist blather about "root causes," all of these things fail to address root causes. Vandals don't want to create art, they want to vandalize. Street junkies don't want a "safe place" to shoot up, they just want to shoot up. Violent teenagers and young adults don't take to the streets and beat people up and destroy property because they're bored and lack places to socialize, they take to the streets and commit crimes because they want to. That's not the whole story, however, because there is something in play besides the desire to do these things.

It is related to steps 2 and 3 in the progression. They do it because they want to do it, but also because it is safe to do it. The law is not enforced, so there are few if any consequences. Tag the "legal wall" or tag the local shop - it doesn't matter because the consequences are the same: none. Legalizing crime doesn't make crime go away, and creating a venue dedicated to the commission of crime doesn't reduce it outside of that venue. Pretending that violent criminals are just lashing out because they're bored and then providing a rec center will not reduce violent crime. "Legal walls" don't work. Neither do needle exchanges. Neither did "midnight basketball." The Feral Adolescent Wilding Centers won't work, either.

This idea doesn't work. It has never worked. It will never work. But the Left will never let go of it. So long as there are protected groups the Left wishes to insulate from consequences for crime, some form of this idea will always resurface. It's as predictable as the sunrise.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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