Categories
crime and punishment media and media people

Crime’s Ups and Downs

crime, statistics, protests

“Our crime rate is going up,” proclaimed former President Donald Trump during the Republican National Convention. 

But no, says Reason magazine: “Promising To Restore ‘Law and Order,’ Trump Falsely Claims Crime Is Rising.”

I often refer to Reason’s Jacob Sullum for these kinds of statistics, but Sullum may be missing something this time.

Setting aside the new journalistic cliché of accusing Trump of “falsely claiming” in the headline, what of the stats?

1. “Violent crime in the United States has fallen precipitously since 1993, when the homicide rate was 9.5 per 100,000 residents. By 2013, the rate was less than half that number.”

2. “[T]he most notable recent increase in the homicide rate happened on Trump’s watch, and violent crime has been falling since then.”

Crime did indeed spike under “Trump’s watch.” But was Trump to blame? 

Crime spiked in the “Summer of Love” as a result of the mass protests against George Floyd’s death, the left’s demands to “defund the police,” and the climate of approved (“mostly peaceful”) violent riot. Trump’s enemies caused all this. Much of it may have been fueled by pandemic anxieties, but there was another factor: the Democrats’ anarcho-​tyranny push to pry Trump out of office in annus horribilis 2020.

Since then crime, which is usually under-​reported, now appears to be increasingly under-​reported for systemic reasons. Some crimes, such as theft, have been demoted in the law books, allowing theft to run rampant in several major American cities — not just San Francisco — thereby disallowing the uptick in crime to even hit the stats.

What if bad data is the consequence of such policy? 

Meaning the perception of an increase in crime is true … at least in some places.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

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Categories
Thought

Albert Camus

Fascism is an act of contempt, in fact. Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism.

Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951).
Categories
Today

Out the Window!

July 30, 1419, the First Defenestration of Prague: Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall, on Charles Square. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall. The mob, enraged, stormed the hall. Once inside, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob.

King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, upon hearing this news, was so stunned, the legend goes, that he died soon after.

On July 30, 1619, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convened for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia. On the same date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon issued the “Declaration of the People of Virginia,” beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

On this date in 1863, representatives of the United States and tribal leaders (including the Shoshone’s Chief Pocatello) signed the Treaty of Box Elder.

July 30 birthdays include Henry Ford (1863), Gen. Smedley Butler (1881), C. Northcote Parkinson (1909), and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947).

Vanuatuans celebrate Independence Day on July 30.

Categories
ideological culture

Blue in Paris

Olympics opening ceremony

The Olympics is about athletic excellence. There’s also a patriotic-​nationalistic component that uneasily fits with the games. And then there are the rites and glamorous “artistic” ceremonies that start the quadrennial shindig — an uneasy mix we usually ignore as we focus on the contests.

But it was hard to ignore the bizarre showpieces at the opening ceremonies in Paris, for the “Games of the XXXIII Olympiad.”

“The ceremony received a mixed reception,” Wikipedia records, “with many praising the performances of Gojira, Aya Nakamura, Celine Dion and Lady Gaga, while criticism was directed at the length, poor weather conditions, technical issues, and some elements of the production itself.” The Guardian, however, titled its coverage “Most French newspapers praise the Olympics spectacle but far-​right commentators reject ‘woke propaganda’” — but that begs a question: were the “woke” parts really propaganda? 

I mean, can repellent things be propagandistic?

Celebratory for the woke, sure; but at some even low level of repellence the effect becomes merely off-​putting. And then … repulsive.

Sure, most woke media was enthusiastic — “artistic audacity” was a phrase used by the New York Times. But, as The Guardian summarized, the British were “less flattering. ‘La Farce’ was the verdict of the Daily Mail, describing it as a ‘surreal opening ceremony dubbed “the worst ever,”’ while for the Times it was ‘a damp squib of a show.’”

At issue on social media was a drag-​queen parody of The Last Supper — mischaracterized by the woke and Wikipedia as “a bacchanalian feast.” Bacchus himself, though — or Dionysus or whoever — was portrayed by a pudgy near-​naked male singer painted in blue. 

Ugh.

It is wrong to purposely offend someone’s religion. Not illegal. Just wrong. And it informs Christians that yet another major institution of official society does not like us.

Someone might not unreasonably suggest Christians need to present politically. God helps those who help themselves.

Or we could go back to the old ways, where the artists didn’t flaunt their sexualities or heresies or even pride — not horning in on the athletes’ attention at an athletic contest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

A. James Gregor

Where mass-​mobilizing ‘revolutionary Marxists’ have come to power, and remained in power sufficiently long to create a viable political system, what they have generally succeeded in creating is a reasonable analogue of the Fascist state.

A. James Gregor, The Fascist Persuasion in Radical Politics (1974), p. 134. 
Categories
Today

Tocqueville

On July 29, 1805, Alexis de Tocqueville was born. His most famous book, Democracy in America (two volumes: 1835, 1840), quickly became a classic of social and political research and analysis, and remains the most important early book about the United States of America. He is often referred to as a founder of sociology as well as a major figure in the development of classical liberalism.