Will the Obama Left in California Drag the Nation into Greece?

 

California Ushers In a New Era of Bipartisan Plunder

The Golden State descends to a new low.

Steven Greenhut |

 God help California from its current crop of wealthy “moderates,” who believe that the only thing that will save our state is a dose of higher taxes. They continue to embrace electoral rule changes that ultimately will undermine the GOP’s supposedly hard line on tax hikes.

June 5 was the first election that used the “top two” primary system, a form of open primary designed specifically to elect more candidates who resemble former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who helped advance the idea. He was one of least effective and least principled Republicans to attain higher office in recent years, so let this serve as a warning about what is to come.

The election also took place under new districts drawn under a supposedly apolitical redistricting system.

After the smoke cleared, we find these results: Top two has obliterated minor parties, and assured that the ideas they bring in the general election, will not get a fair hearing. In many legislative races, the general election will pit two members of the party against each other, which is part of the system’s design. Top two is supposed to promote greater choice, but voters will have fewer choices.

Top two is supposed to reduce the influence of big money, but record amounts were spent in the primary cycle. It will only increase the power of moneyed interests. Now candidates will need to run in two open, general elections, rather than in a narrow primary and then in a general, in what typically is a safe seat. That takes a lot more money to win than it did before. Who do you think will provide it?

Redistricting was supposed to take the politics out of politics, but media reports proved that Republicans improperly vetted the redistricting commission members, allowing on the panel agenda-driven lefties.

Between the two “reforms,” it’s clear what will happen: Democrats are likely to gain a rock-solid two-thirds majority in both houses of the Legislature, where they can then have the power to raise taxes at will. Another “moderate” reform has also gone into effect—the elimination of the two-thirds vote requirement to pass state budgets. We can already see what has happened as a result of that change. In this cycle, Republicans don’t have a say in the process, because Democrats no longer need to rely on their votes to pass their budgets.

I’m not sure how giving only one party and its most extreme elements unchecked power to pass budgets is in any way a moderate idea.

Fortunately, these political reformers were unsuccessful in their attempt to create a constitutional convention that would have enabled the liberals who dominate our political process to cast aside many of the taxpayer protections in the state constitution. But some of them are eager to see the initiative, recall, and referendum process hobbled, so average folks are more dependent than ever on the Legislature.

These good-government types argue that Democrats and Republicans are too partisan (true), that liberals are too focused on insanity such as banning foie gras and imposing regulations on tanning salons (also true), and that conservatives are too focused on social issues such as gay marriage (yet again, true). But their solutions miss the mark by more than a country mile.

Everyone knows the political system in our state Capitol is broken, but their naivete and failure to consider the law of unintended consequences is infuriating.

The problem isn’t that political parties fight with each other. The problem is that one party in particular is in control of the Legislature and statewide constitutional offices, and that this party is controlled by the public-sector unions. Note how infrequently these moderate reformers point to the union problem. They figure we can reform the state without taking on the main obstacle to reform.

In a typical newspaper editorial in favor of Proposition 14, which in 2010 created the top-two primary system, the Marin Independent Journal opined: “Proposition 14 could help bring cooperation and collaborative problem solving back to Sacramento.” As silly as partisan displays can be, I much prefer a world of political debate, where two parties hold each other accountable than a world where few of the political actors have any governing principles, and instead work together in a cooperative way to divvy up the spoils provided by taxpayers. The idea that Sacramento will be overtaken by a bipartisan reform spirit is too funny for words.

The ostensible goal of these reforms sound sounds sincere, but I suspect that most of their advocates have a darker agenda. They know the proposals will help Democrats pick up either enough seats or enough wobbly Republicans to raise taxes. Once that big battle over taxes is over, there will no longer be a stumbling block to the infrastructure-spending and other programs these business interests support.

The joke will be on them, of course. They envision a world where they are in the backrooms, diverting tax loot toward the infrastructure projects they desperately want. But instead the unions will control those backrooms just as they do now. These businesses—the ones who sell the rope to the hangman—will soon find their necks in a tightening noose. Sure, they will get their occasional privileges, but the business climate around them will continue to decline.

Ultimately, there will be fewer principled legislators to stand up against tax hikes and regulations just because they are wrong. Fewer legislators will focus on creating a better climate for all businesses and not just the favored few. Fewer legislators will call for measures to reform government and stretch tax dollars rather than finding more revenue.

I prefer a battle that at least occasionally revolves around an idea rather than an era of bipartisanship where both parties quietly plunder the rest of us.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

Whatever Happened to Beauty in our American Lives?

THE CURSE OF THE INDORE CIVILIZATION…..WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE WORLD OF BEAUTY?

A people’s culture is imprisoned by the habits of the day.   It is designed by religion, politics, and education or the lack of it whereever people collect and settle.

We live in an America that has been reduced to the indoors.   Perhaps the majority of its population now believe that the tomato is manufactured at the local super market or factory.

We live in an America whose indoor college graduates in the social sciences believe that carbon dioxide is a polutant and must be  eliminated from our atmosphere.

They know nearly nothing about the miracle of chlorophyll, but they are keen on manipulating the young human mind.

If a lateral branch of a tree stretches out at the four foot level from its main trunk, and the tree grows a foot per year, at what height will that branching be in those ten years?

I’d guess from my nearly life time experience in landscape gardening the majority of today’s urban Americans adult and otherwise, would be troubled finding the correct, but very, very simple answer to the question.    Yet, the majority of these folks live in their own homes which are located on grounds which grow a number of trees and shrubs.

The national ignorance might be good for our landscape businesses, but it isn’t good for those of us in the landscape business who are interested in creating beauty to uplift the spirit and souls of all who bear witness to beauty…….which, of course, is the God-given reason that the human being, at least in Western culture, accepts landscaping of whatever kind around the houses where they live and many businesses where we still work.

The world’s Western population is an indoor population.    It is a university controlled population.  It has been instrumental in the killing of things classically beautiful, because it destroys so much of the individual’s personal creativity funneling it, diminishing it into the cheap, low, the empty, the spiritless, the bureaucratic mundane, taught by the unthinking, unimaginative, programmed instructor who was herself, himself were  taught by the unthinking, unimaginvative, programmed instructor. 

I spent two years as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota Department of Horticulture in the middle 1970s.   I received some vital learnings which furthered my education about this generally outdoor art and science……soils, some more advanced learnings in botany and plant diseases and pests, but nothing at all of value regarding ‘horticulture’ for the world of landscape gardening.  Nothing was offered in its art, history, purpose, its collective importance in the human domain………the most revered art form of all art forms.

In my two years of classroom horticulture imprisonments at the University of Minnesota Department of Landscaping, I never saw a single picture of any kind of a Minnesota  winter setting.   I did complain to Phd Professor, Jane MacKinnon, a charming, likeable, bright gal from Mississippi why the Department seemed to avoid presenting any information about the longest landscape season of the Minnesota year……as long as all of the other landscape seasons combined, she seemed shocked and stuttered, “Well, it’s much  too depressing to even  think about Winter.” …so, the inference was, why and what can we teach about its landscape.

I also have had some experience in  the University of Minnesota’s Fine Arts Department some years later.   The teaching of that art in that place  seemed to be confined to lecture and lectures’ attacks on the idea of beauty……..almost entirely due to the fact they themselves were not artists at all, but bureaucrats to talked about art and made their students believe they could become artists, but no one ever seemed to learn how to  create color mixes for they didn’t know how to mix paints.

What about the “art” of music…….how is that ‘taught’ these days.   Why is beauty so totally absent from our music-deprived ears?    Why has its noise  become so akin to the smell of garbage in the street, but in aural form?    At what university anywhere, coast to coast, in any continent north or south, has there been  produced a Beethoven, whose music tells us how good it is to be alive, or even a composer of another “Piano Man”?

Why do we put up with this up-to-date and expensive university world which universally  preaches the political and religious doctrine of the  ”Death of Beauty”?

You, dear home owner, can begin to change all this, by making a statement.   How about starting  a twenty square- foot area somewhere on the ground for which you pay taxes and establish as your goal to make this space BEAUTIFUL.  

Begin to think “beauty”.

Do some reading and visiting first.   Observe.   Judge the good versus the bad.    Ask yourself  and answer, how and why they differ.  

 The landscape garden is a visual art form…..so is magic.  

Like people, even those attending or graduating from university,  not all plants are the same.   They have their own genetic material which provides certain opportunities and limits to contributing  to your happiness.

Help restore creating  beauty  into the American way of life.   It is so much easier to slip into the ugly, the sloppy, the mundane, isn’t it?

Call us  at Masterpiece, if you need assistance.    We have alot of tips to share and home  grounds to show.    Our number is 952-933-5777.

Religious Conservative, Gary Bauer, Calls for All Pro-Lifers to Embrace Pro-Lifer Romney

Skeptical Pro-Lifers: It’s Time to Embrace Mitt Romney

by Gary Bauer | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com

article sent by Mark Waldeland:

Pro-life advocates love a good conversion story. And in recent years they have cheered as a long list of politicians, celebrities, and former abortion facility workers have embraced the pro-life cause.

But there’s one man whose pro-life transformation many abortion opponents seem unwilling to accept: Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor and likely Republican presidential nominee followed a well-worn path from abortion advocacy to science-inspired pro-life awakening. But some pro-life candidates and commentators have remained skeptical about the authenticity of Romney’s conversion.

It’s no secret that Romney was once an emphatic supporter of abortion rights. Running for US Senate in Massachusetts in 1994, Romney declared that he was a “committed” pro-choice advocate, adding, “And you will not see me wavering on that.”

Romney was slightly more nuanced while running for Massachusetts governor in 2002, stating, “On a personal basis, I don’t favor abortion. However, as governor of the commonwealth, I will protect a woman’s right to choose under the laws of the country and the commonwealth. That’s the same position I’ve had for many years.”

Two years into his governorship, however, Romney changed to the pro-life position. In 2004, as his state debated public funding of embryonic stem cell research, Romney met with physicians, scientists and bio-ethicists to better understand the science and ethics involved.

“In considering the issue of embryo cloning and embryo farming,” he would later write, “I saw where the harsh logic of abortion can lead–to the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited.”

Romney’s stem cell epiphany led him on a path to the pro-life position and to the realization that as governor “I simply could not be part of an effort that would cause the destruction of human life.”

Today Romney calls himself “firmly pro-life.” He believes Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationally, should be overturned, and he is committed to appointing judges who share that view. He says he would be “delighted” to sign a federal ban on abortion if Roe were overturned.

The science of life is changing hearts and minds.

Model Kathy Ireland read medical books to come to the pro-life view. “What I learned,” she told Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show in 2011, “was that at the moment of conception, a new life comes into being. The DNA, the genetic blueprint is there.”

Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker who is now a prominent pro-life activist, wrote in her autobiography that viewing an ultrasound of an abortion led to her sudden “change of heart.”

Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s odyssey from abortion pioneer to pro-life champion began when he saw an ultrasound in the late 1970s. “For the first time I began to think about what we really had been doing at the clinic,” he later wrote. “Ultrasound opened up a new world. For the first time, we could really see the human fetus, measure it, observe it, watch it, and indeed bond with it and love it. I began to do that… Having looked at the ultrasound, I could no longer go on as before.”

Then there’s Rick Santorum, who told Philadelphia magazine in 1995 that he “was basically pro-choice all my life, until I ran for Congress.” Then, he said, he “sat down and read… the scientific literature.”

Romney sometimes compares his pro-life conversion to that of President Ronald Reagan. It’s not a perfect comparison, but there are some remarkable similarities. Like Romney, Reagan was the Republican governor of a pro-choice state who faced the prospect of enacting a law that would lead to the destruction of innocent human life.

Just a few months into his term as governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which permitted abortion when the mental or physical health of the mother was endangered or when statutory rape had occurred.

It was a liberal law, especially for that time, and the mental and physical health exceptions became loopholes that led to a surge in California’s abortion rate. But the law’s effects also led to a change in Reagan. As Dinesh D’Souza wrote in “Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader”:

“[Reagan’s] subsequent private correspondence shows he was genuinely shocked by the magnitude of abortions under the new law. His subsequent correspondence suggests that he was intensely grieved by this outcome. Edwin Meese, a senior aide, told me that Reagan’s regrets over his role in promoting abortion on demand in California may have intensified his pro-life convictions and led him, as a presidential candidate, to support measures like the human life amendment, which would establish a blanket prohibition on abortion.”

Like Reagan, Romney is a contrite convert, referring to his past support for Roe as his life’s “defining mistake.” When challenged about his previous support for abortion in a Republican debate in December, he said “I changed my mind…I’m firmly pro-life…sometimes I’m wrong.”

Mitt Romney displays humility and gratitude in discussing his evolution on abortion. Skeptical pro-lifers should do the same in embracing him.

LifeNews.com Note: Gary Bauer is the president of American Values, a national pro-family organization and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families. Bauer ran for the Republican nomination for president and appears frequently on radio and television programs.

Krauthammer: “Obama’s Naked Lawlessness”

The Immigration Bombshell:

Obama’s Naked Lawlessness

by Charles Krauthammer   at   Investor’s Business Daily:

With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations (of immigrants brought here illegally as children) through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.” — President Obama, March 28, 2011

Those laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama last week suspended these very deportations — granting infinitely renewable “deferred action” with attendant work permits — thereby unilaterally rewriting the law. And doing precisely what he himself admits he is barred from doing.

Obama had tried to change the law. In late 2010, he asked Congress to pass the Dream Act, which offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants. Congress refused.

When subsequently pressed by Hispanic groups to simply implement the law by executive action, Obama explained that it would be illegal.

“Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. … But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

That was then. Now he’s gone and done it anyway. It’s obvious why. The election approaches and his margin is slipping. He needs a big Hispanic vote and this is the perfect pander. After all, who will call him on it? A supine press? Congressional Democrats?

Nothing like an upcoming election to temper their Bush 43-era zeal for defending Congress’ exclusive Article I power to legislate.

With a single Homeland Security Department memo, the immigration laws no longer apply to 800,000 people. By what justification? Prosecutorial discretion, says Janet Napolitano.

This is utter nonsense. Prosecutorial discretion is the application on a case-by-case basis of considerations of extreme and extenuating circumstances. No one is going to deport, say, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant whose parents had just died in some ghastly accident and who is the sole support for a disabled younger sister and ailing granny. That’s what prosecutorial discretion is for.

The Napolitano memo is nothing of the sort. It’s the unilateral creation of a new category of persons — a class of 800,000 — who, regardless of individual circumstance , are hereby exempt from current law so long as they meet certain biographic criteria.

This is not discretion. This is a fundamental rewriting of the law.

Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS to stop collecting capital gains taxes, and declares that anyone refusing to pay them will suffer no fine, no penalty, no sanction whatsoever. (Analogy first suggested by law professor John Yoo.)

It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment. Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, this is not an area of perpetual executive-legislative territorial contention.

Nor is cap-gains, like the judicial status of unlawful enemy combatants, an area where the law is silent or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.

It is shameful that Congressional Democrats should be applauding such a brazen end-run. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and pre-empts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama’s own admission, it is naked lawlessness.

As for policy, I sympathize with the obvious humanitarian motives of the Dream Act. But two important considerations are overlooked in concentrating exclusively on the Dream Act poster child, the straight-A valedictorian who rescues kittens from trees.

First, offering potential illegal immigrants the prospect that, if they can successfully hide long enough, their children will one day freely enjoy the bounties of American life creates a huge incentive for yet more illegal immigration.

Second, the case for compassion and fairness is hardly as clear-cut as advertised. What about those who languish for years in godforsaken countries awaiting legal admission to America? Their scrupulousness about the law could easily cost their children the American future that illegal immigrants will have secured for theirs.

But whatever our honest and honorable disagreements about the policy, what holds us together is a shared allegiance to our constitutional order. That’s the fundamental issue here. As Obama himself argued in rejecting the executive action he has now undertaken, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about it.”

Except, apparently, when violating that solemn obligation serves his re-election needs.

It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment. Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, this is not an area of perpetual executive-legislative territorial contention.

Nor is cap-gains, like the judicial status of unlawful enemy combatants, an area where the law is silent or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.

It is shameful that Congressional Democrats should be applauding such a brazen end-run. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and pre-empts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama’s own admission, it is naked lawlessness.

As for policy, I sympathize with the obvious humanitarian motives of the Dream Act. But two important considerations are overlooked in concentrating exclusively on the Dream Act poster child, the straight-A valedictorian who rescues kittens from trees.

First, offering potential illegal immigrants the prospect that, if they can successfully hide long enough, their children will one day freely enjoy the bounties of American life creates a huge incentive for yet more illegal immigration.

Second, the case for compassion and fairness is hardly as clear-cut as advertised. What about those who languish for years in godforsaken countries awaiting legal admission to America? Their scrupulousness about the law could easily cost their children the American future that illegal immigrants will have secured for theirs.

But whatever our honest and honorable disagreements about the policy, what holds us together is a shared allegiance to our constitutional order. That’s the fundamental issue here. As Obama himself argued in rejecting the executive action he has now undertaken, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about it.”

Except, apparently, when violating that solemn obligation serves his re-election needs.

Obama’s New York Times-Soviet Party Press Hides Another Obama Scandal

Press lets scandal hide in plain sight

by John Podhoretz     New York Post:

There’s a reason you don’t know much about the complicated and confusing mess known as “Fast and Furious.” The mainstream media have largely ignored this Obama administration scandal, which would have dominated mainstream front pages and homepages and programs for months had it all taken place under a Republican administration.

Something changed yesterday. With his attorney general imminently at risk of being held in contempt of Congress, which has happened to administration officials only four times in the past 30 years, the president of the United States moved to claim “executive privilege” in relation to some of the information sought by Congress.

At first glance, this is a perplexing move. Executive privilege is a specific power possessed by the president that allows him to withhold or shield the release of information from Congress because he is its co-equal in power.

But the “Fast and Furious” investigation has to do with the conduct of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder, not the White House or the president.

It has to do with a botched program inside the Justice Department that led to the death of a federal law-enforcement officer.

And, as usually happens in these cases, it has grown to include the way Holder handled the fallout and whether, in an effort to mitigate the political damage, he deliberately misled congressional investigators. The House Oversight Committee claims Holder has improperly withheld more than 100,000 documents from its view.

There’s no question that Congress has the right to examine both the conduct of the Justice Department, whose budget it oversees, and the attorney general, an official confirmed by Congress and obligated by statute to provide all manner of information to relevant committees.

The decision by the president to involve himself directly in this matter is surprising because it means one of two things.

Possibility No. 1: The White House and the president were more directly involved in the “Fast and Furious” fallout than was previously thought. Otherwise, how could there be an assertion of executive privilege? Through the assertion, President Obama is opening himself up to questions about his and the White House’s involvement with an unambiguous disaster.

Possibility No. 2: The claim of executive privilege is a calculated effort to delay the release of certain documents until after Election Day. The claim throws the matter into the courts, with the ultimate adjudication in the hands of the Supreme Court. The process will take months; the Supreme Court doesn’t return to its duties until the first Monday in October.

So even if the claim is entirely baseless, it will work to protect the president from whatever revelations may be contained in the withheld documents.

No matter how you slice it, then, this is a pretty interesting situation — especially with the fact that it is likely the attorney general will be held in contempt of Congress.

So will the story get covered now?

All in all, it’s really dumbfounding how little the public has been told about “Fast and Furious,” given how colorful and melodramatic a scandal it is. A branch of the Justice Department decided to let thousands of guns sold in the United States make their way to Mexico to track their use by the drug cartels.

Everything went wrong. The Justice Department lost track of the guns, and it is believed that one of them was used to murder Brian Terry, a US Border Patrol agent — not to mention hundreds of Mexican citizens caught in the crossfire of that country’s drug war.

There have been stories, and powerful ones, especially by Sharyl Atkisson of CBS News. But there has been no media drumbeat, no constant stream of interlocking articles and broadcasts that put relentless pressure on the White House and the Justice Department.

In short order, we may have: a) an attorney general in contempt of Congress, b) a president asserting a pretty baffling claim of executive privilege that practically requires him to acknowledge White House involvement in the matter and c) an energized conservative press smelling blood.

The fact that a story as juicy as this one has been given short shrift already makes laughable the continued assertion by media panjandrums that they possess no bias toward the Obama administration.

If things continue this way, it will be an admission that they’ve assigned themselves the job of serving as the president’s blocking guard.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/press_lets_scandal_hide_in_plain_MOBmscjG6huguOZUgQGIcM#ixzz1yWwqmRUO

Obama leaking secrets to prop up his flailing campaign for president

The Scandal of Our Age…..

by Victor Davis Hanson    at   Pajamas Media:

Obama politicking through “Securitygate”:  

What I call “Securitygate” — the release of the most intricate details about the cyber war against Iran, the revelations about a Yemeni double-agent, disclosures about covert operations in and against Pakistan, intimate details about the Osama bin Laden raid and the trove of information taken from his compound, and the Predator drone assassination list and the president’s methodology in selecting targets — is far more serious than either prior scandal. David Sanger and others claim that all this was sort of in the public domain anyway; well, “sort of” covers a lot of ground. We sort of knew about the cyber war against Iran, but not to the detail that Sanger provides and not through the direct agency of the Obama administration itself.

Here is the crux of the scandal: Obama is formulating a new policy of avoiding overt unpopular engagements, while waging an unprecedented covert war across the world. He’s afraid that the American people do not fully appreciate these once-secret efforts and might in 2012 look only at his mishaps in Afghanistan or his public confusion over Islamic terror. Ergo, feed information to a Sanger or Ignatius so that they can skillfully inform us, albeit with a bit of dramatic “shock” and “surprise,” just how tough, brutal, and deadly Barack Obama really is.

Yet these disclosures will endanger our national security, especially in the case of a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. They will probably get people killed or tortured, and they will weaken America’s ability for years to work covertly with allies. Our state-to-state relations will be altered, and perhaps even the techniques and technology of our cyber and special operations wars dispersed into the wrong hands. There is nothing in the recent “exclusive” writings of David Sanger or David Ignatius that was necessary for the American people to know at this stage, unless one thinks that we had a right to the full story of the Doolittle Raid in 1942, or that Americans by July 1944 needed an insider account of the date and planning of D-Day, or that we should have been apprised about what was really going on in New Mexico in 1944.

Here is why Securitygate is a national outrage and goes to the heart of a free and civil society

Please read further:

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-scandal-of-our-age/?singlepage=true

Violence from the Inner City, One Party, Entitled and Troubled Black Plantation

 ”FLASH’ MOB VIOLENCE, POVERTY, AND RECLAIMING THE STREETS

 

CHICAGO

 

by Abraham H. Miller    at   Pajamas Media:

Streeterville is a quiet, upscale part of Chicago that encompasses the Magnificent Mile and is just south of the Gold Coast. Northwestern University’s Law School is in Streeterville, as is its hospital. Oprah has an apartment in Streeterville. A close friend of mine once lived in Steeterville, and I spent many a late night walking off jet lag on its streets. After all, if you’re not safe in Streeterville, where are you safe?

As a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital learned the other night, you’re really not safe in Streeterville.  Accosted by a “flash” mob of black teenagers, the physician was repeatedly hit and beaten.  He wasn’t robbed.  He says the motive wasn’t racial, as he’s Asian.  But typically such mobs are black and their victims are whites, who are abused with racist insults while they’re being injured.

The physician observed that the teenagers had accosted others before they attacked him. The teenagers were simply looking to have fun by hurting someone, and the next someone was him. And, of course, this is not the first instance of such mob behavior flowing out of the deteriorating inner city into the city’s wealthier areas. It isn’t even the first foray into upscale Streeterville. The criminals now have done what any species does when it exhausts the resources of its immediate environment. They have moved on to another habitat.

Don’t expect Reverend Jesse Jackson or the Reverend Al Sharpton to be organizing a march against this brand of racism. After all, black-on-white violence isn’t really good for the kind of media exploitation that fills their coffers. Barack Obama will not find that any of the victims could have been his son, and Eric Holder is too busy looking into the racial motives of George Zimmerman to launch an investigation into black mob violence against whites.

Sure, Chicago, like most major American cities, has its crime-polluted neighborhoods where going out on the street at night is about as safe as going out in Baghdad. We all know how to avoid those, unless our economic circumstances regrettably compel us to live in such neighborhoods. Last week, 53 people were shot in Chicago. Most of us will dismiss this as an irrelevant statistic.  After all, we know without reading the papers where those people live: in the south and west sides. There, the population is largely black or  Latino,  gangs fight turf wars over the drug trade, and getting a gun is not only a rite of passage but also is more common than getting a high school diploma.

We don’t ask if our laws and social system have gone astray in tolerating such violence.  After all, we delude ourselves into believing that people like us are immune to being violated in our own safe neighborhoods. Basically, we know where to go or not go in our cities and don’t question if it’s acceptable for some of our fellow citizens to live under persistently threatening conditions.

We assume that because people who look like the victims are also the perpetrators, it’s not our problem. Our continually reinforced ethnic tribalism really comes down to: we don’t give a damn about black-on-black violence or what happens in the deteriorating parts of our city. We can be smug about gun control because none of our neighbors are shooting each other. We can be self-righteous about microscopic adherence to due process because none of us will have to testify in open court against people who belong to vengeful criminal organizations.

Such delusions are part of what makes us not only smug but also hypocrites. We invoke the notion that poverty causes crime.  If only we’d have greater redistribution of income and wealth, all this would go away. We take comfort in the idea that there is a solution to the problem. Why not? It’s ingrained in our psyches, pontificated as one of the few real “laws” of social science, and comes to us as strongly from the classrooms as it does from the bar stools. We can, thus, avoid the thought of 53 white people being gunned down on our streets over a few days.

But as the late James Q. Wilson so artfully pointed out decades ago, it might be that poverty causing crime is just another logical fallacy. Wilson challenged us to think that maybe it’s the other way around: crime causes poverty.

My brother drove a chemical tanker in Chicago. He was a big, powerful man who had been an amateur boxer. One day, while he was setting up his hoses on the south side to pump chemicals into a factory’s tanks, a group of teenagers surrounded him and demanded his money. He carried a spiked billy club for such purposes and instead of producing his wallet produced a lesson in night stick justice. When he returned to his yard, he told his dispatcher that he’d never deliver to that business again. Next time, he said, the kids might have guns and a shot would explode the flammable chemical truck and take out a city block.

 

Eventually, no driver would deliver to the business. The business moved to the northern suburbs and with it went the neighborhood jobs. Repeat this by tens of thousands of times encompassing all types of crimes, and you get a snapshot of an environment where few are eager to invest capital or write insurance. Add to that a demographic of low education and criminal conviction, and you have a labor force no one is eager to hire.

As gangs of black teenagers roam the streets of places like Streeterville looking for nothing else but to hurt people, we need to realize that the social order has changed. More important, we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that if we just pump more money into the inner city, the problems of teenage violence will be solved.

I don’t know what the root causes of mindless violence are any more than I know what the root causes of a British soccer riot are. I don’t care if these teenage “flash” mobs have a need to experience the equivalent of what the soccer rioters call “an agro,” the emotional high from being in a riot.

At some point, all of us — no matter where we live — have to deal with the effects of such violent behavior. We have to defend ourselves and leave justifications for violence masquerading as explanations to the social scientists. We have to scream, “Enough.” And we have to add our voices to those in the inner city that are compelled to live daily with violence. We have ignored their plight for far too long.

The police can’t be everywhere. It’s time for all neighborhoods to organize, to patrol their own streets, and to have plans to counter street violence. As women have appropriately and courageously sought to take back the night, we have to emulate their example and organize to take back the streets.

The Guardian Angels and neighborhood-watch patrols working with police are the beginnings of such policies. Beyond that, there is a need for an armed citizenry exercising a constitutional right to carry a weapon. When the social order has been violated by mobs seeking to inflict harm on innocents, the people themselves need to re-establish conditions where they are not defenseless against those who can choose at random to make them victims.