Normally when I write a piece on Substack, I overwhelm readers with data and links. But I’m short on time today and most if not all of the situations referenced below are public-domain concerns, you might say. We’ve been reading about these things for several years now.
Thank you for these provocative comments, which you obviously spent some time putting together. (If you just dashed these things off, I'm jealous.) Based on your responses I think you'll be interested in some of what I have upcoming. In the meantime here's a link to my author page at Quillette; I think I've done some nice work for them, if I so say so myself:
Our country has historical amnesia. We tried going soft on criminals and other antisocial types in the 60s and got runaway crime waves and social dysfunction in the 70s and 80s until the tough-on-crime and welfare-reform laws and policies got enacted in the 90s, leading to dramatic improvements in quality of life in the cities and incredible reductions in violent crime. But then a new generation thought they knew everything and nobody before their time knew anything at all, so they ignored the lessons of the past and made all the same mistakes from the 60s all over again, except that they went even further with it. And in no time, the same catastrophic consequences returned. It would really be nice to see the imbeciles who championed these disastrous changes face some accountability for it, but these days, the only direction people go when they fail is up, while the regular rubes get stuck with the costs. Hopefully, at the very least, these policies get reversed before they do even more damage.
Thank you for these provocative comments, which you obviously spent some time putting together. (If you just dashed these things off, I'm jealous.) Based on your responses I think you'll be interested in some of what I have upcoming. In the meantime here's a link to my author page at Quillette; I think I've done some nice work for them, if I so say so myself:
https://quillette.com/author/steve-salerno/
Our country has historical amnesia. We tried going soft on criminals and other antisocial types in the 60s and got runaway crime waves and social dysfunction in the 70s and 80s until the tough-on-crime and welfare-reform laws and policies got enacted in the 90s, leading to dramatic improvements in quality of life in the cities and incredible reductions in violent crime. But then a new generation thought they knew everything and nobody before their time knew anything at all, so they ignored the lessons of the past and made all the same mistakes from the 60s all over again, except that they went even further with it. And in no time, the same catastrophic consequences returned. It would really be nice to see the imbeciles who championed these disastrous changes face some accountability for it, but these days, the only direction people go when they fail is up, while the regular rubes get stuck with the costs. Hopefully, at the very least, these policies get reversed before they do even more damage.