The surge in crime we've been witnessing in New York (murders up 14 percent over last year during the first three months of 2021) and Chicago (homicides up 33 percent) and Los Angeles (homicides up nearly 36 percent) is evidence that, while progressives may know how to get elected, they don't have a clue about how to govern.
"Once in office, progressives don't seem to know how to run anything more serious than a street protest," is how an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal put it. There are basic rules of civilized societies, and one of them is that you rightly should be concerned that if you commit a serious crime, you'll wind up behind bars. But that's not how it works anymore in a lot of places.
If it isn't progressive mayors supporting "defund the police" movements, it's progressive prosecutors who don't really like prosecuting criminals. In Los Angeles, the new district attorney, George Gascon, is reviewing nearly 20,000 old prison sentences for violent crimes such as murder. Why? Because he's considering releasing the convicted criminals early, which he figures would be a good way to reduce overcrowding in prisons. Voters have noticed - and have launched a recall movement to get him out of office.
And if you get arrested for breaking the law, more than a few liberal city officials are against cash bail requirements because, they say, that's discrimination against poor people. So the guy who just got arrested can be back on the street committing more crimes even before the court paperwork is completed. Voters have noticed that, too.
The absence of responsible fathers in the lives of young boys in places such as Chicago - where, over Father's Day weekend, 10 people were killed and 65 wounded in shootings - is causing more problems than old-fashioned racism. Yet Chicago's progressive mayor, Lori Lightfoot, tells us that "racism is a public-health crisis" that continues to "rob residents of the opportunity to live and lead full, healthy and happy lives."
And when I brought up fatherlessness with a progressive journalist, he angrily told me I was dealing in "tired, conservative tropes." Conservatives talk about the problems caused by fatherlessness, I told him, because liberals won't.
Are there any not getting so much foreign aid that they can't afford to be lazy?