The Rejection of the Past's Lessons by Leftist Progressives Sows the Seeds of Their Own Undoing

The Chaos of "F*ck the Police" in Baltimore

Nothing unravels faster or more completely than those failures born out of the best of intentions. Say what you will about Barack Obama, for instance, there is little doubt that his views, virtually ALL of his views, are born of good intentions. His primary concern, shared by many, is in lifting the most alienated and disaffected in America out of poverty and degradation.

Those who see him as a “closet Muslim,” or some “secret America-hater,” are, at best, delusional...no different than those on the far-Left who saw the hapless G W Bush as some kind of Anti-Christ. In the end, ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome) is not appreciably different than BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome).

Here’s the rub, I AGREE, for the most part, with all those “good intentions” that the likes of Barack Obama, Bill de Blasio and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (Baltimore’s Mayor) all profess, BUT I know too much about Expanding Variability and human nature to agree with their naïve and simplistic methods.

Expanding Variability posits that the more data/information we gather, the more variables we uncover and encounter, therefore, the more complex a problem becomes NOT the reverse. It’s Expanding Variability that brought down the John V. Lindsay administration in New York City and ultimately bankrupted New York City by the mid-1970s, by relying on the Rand Corporation’s policy reports that DID NOT take Expanding Variability into account (see Joe Flood’s great work The Fires http://www.amazon.com/Fires-Computer-Intentions-City-Determined/dp/1594485062/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1439984772&sr=8-1). That bankrupting of NYC was a feat that resulted in a 35 year exodus of Leftist progressives from this city’s highest political leadership. Ed Koch first took the city on a decidedly anti-Leftist bent, followed by a brief and disastrous one term Dinkins administration that brought on 8 years of “Rudy,” followed by another 12 years of a Nanny State autocrat, but decidedly UN-Leftist Mike Bloomberg.

At this point, one COULD blame progressives for failing to learn from the past, BUT I think that misses the point, they CAN’T learn from the past, because they reject the lessons of the past.

The lessons of the past are crystal clear, among them are things like; (1) People divorced from work (productive effort) eventually self-destruct, (2) There is no way to “treat” or rehabilitate violent offenders, ONLY the most draconian punishments have any deterrent impact and that deterrent effect is indeed a small one, but at least it deters that specific offender...(3) It’s also clear that the command (government-run) economy doesn’t work...it cannot work.

There exists a 97 page mathematical proof of that, but I won’t even link to it, as it is a total of 97 laborious pages of mostly differential equations, with a few annotations defining the variables involved and a one page synopsis, which is meaningless for those who don’t/can’t/won’t follow the pages and pages of tedious equations. Suffice to say, the proof is there, it has never been effectively challenged, most likely because it CAN’T be effectively challenged, which makes it ALSO a proof that the market-based economy, coupled with private property is the best known producer of widespread prosperity.

Moreover, ONLY the free market encourages, even forces (via the desire for their individual betterment) disparate, even rival, even warlike factions to work together in mutual trade and cooperation to bring about their own individual success. In that way, true Capitalism is the only true revolutionary economic path, reviled as it’s been by monarchs, tyrants (and would-be tyrants), as well as potentates the world over.

BUT Leftist progressives don’t merely misunderstand these lessons, they reject them outright.

As a result, the seeds of Leftist progressive failure lie within the body of its “progressive” policies. Whether it’s gutting standards for College admissions, mortgage qualifications, sympathizing with violent offenders as “righteous victims of a cold-hearted society, fighting back”), or whether it’s increasing the tax burden on productive citizens to pay for profligate expenditures for the non-productive, these policies ALWAYS and reliably end in disasters.

Nowhere is the Leftist progressive vision more warped than in the sphere of criminal justice. They don’t get it. (1) They aren’t particularly concerned about the effects of violent crime, because they’re insulated from it, (2) they view calls for “law and order” as bigotry, because they view violent crime as a “black thing,” and (3) they see punishment, ALL punishments as “cruel and unusual,” often because so many of these folks have come from abusive and dysfunctional childhoods.

That’s why they deliberately ignore things like this (http://theblacksphere.net/2015/08/media-didnt-tell-memphis-cop-shooting/), predominantly black residents of Memphis TN putting out blue balloons in solidarity with POLICE after a Memphis cop was recently shot in that city. An African-American call for “law and order” runs counter to everything Leftist progressives believe in.

This is not only troubling, but it is one of the primary reasons that leftist/progressive policies always doom those administrations (which is NOT really all that important) AND the good intentions they’ve championed (which very much IS very important). The seeds of fascism best take root in Leftist over-tolerance, the seeds of Leftism are always rooted in fascist abuse.

Right now, Baltimore’s residents are in upheaval over an unprecedented spike in violent crime as police their have retrenched and retreated from most high crime areas. When you fundamentally DON’T much like policing (which is often brutally violent work, ESPECIALLY when encountering brutally violent thugs), you’re in no position to seek to make the police do actual “police work,” especially when they’re well aware that merely doing that work may get them fired and even indicted for “crimes” (mostly the “crime” of self-defense) against violent offenders.

THAT’S now a problem for Mayor Rawlings-Blake, a problem that SHOULD unseat her. IF it results in her being unseated by yet another Leftist progressive, that’ll only show that the people of Baltimore haven’t learned the required lessons YET.

We’ll see soon enough.