Greenfield muses on the danger of turning power over to the government.
I just love that pic of Bloomie.
Thursday, August 08, 2013 Quality of Life Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish
"It's hard to remember sometimes that the latest Bloombergian crusade to ban all the sodas, steal all the salt or wall off half the streets to automobile traffic had its roots in another New York City where Times Square was a seedy flickering danger zone, entire neighborhoods were always on the verge of an explosion and the only optimistic people were the ones moving out.
Some twenty years ago, Rudy Giuliani began tackling crime directly with waves of men in blue using smarter and blunter tactics, and also indirectly by going after "Quality of Life" issues. The theory was that crime came out of social blight. Improve the neighborhood and you reduce crime.
. . . . The root of the problem is that both sides agree that government can be used to create a better society. The tug of war between them is not over whether people should be free, but what type of government crackdown will elevate our society.
The right's crackdowns are only necessary because of the social policies of the left. They are not a solution in and of themselves. Every cleanup operation remains incomplete because it only deals with the symptoms of the problem, not with the problem, which is the social policies of the left. A dynamic leader can turn around a city or a state, even a country, but until the left's social policy levers are thoroughly smashed, the cycle will continue. "
I don't know if I agree with this. Cleaning up crime like Rudy did is a necessary function of govt'. Claiming that the only reason the crime appeared is because of Leftists is a stretch. Crime has been around since the beginning of time.
Quote: Frank Cannon wrote in post #2I don't know if I agree with this. Cleaning up crime like Rudy did is a necessary function of govt'. Claiming that the only reason the crime appeared is because of Leftists is a stretch. Crime has been around since the beginning of time.
True.
I realize it's a fine line, but I read the focus more on "The theory was that crime came out of social blight". This is pretty much a progressive theory - poverty generates crime. In the name of clearing up the social blight, policies were instituted that easily morphed into Bloomie's excesses.
In other words instead of just concentrating on countering progressive policies that were soft on crime and aided and abetted criminals, Guiliani extended the mandate to the nebulous concept 'quality of life':
Zitat" ...Bloomberg took his tone from the worst days of Giuliani's term and decided to turn Quality of Life into a means of enforcing conformity with whatever trendy notions of public health or ecology had come out of his favorite think-tanks."
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Fri Aug 09, 2013 5:47 pm
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