Progressive Thinking: Victims of “Until”

The “Theory” of Progressivism is clearly attractive. Many people can be and are led into progressive activism due to the siren-call of its sound bytes.  However….

Eventually time and reality catches up with them. Pick a couple of their most heart-felt and enduring stances – gun control, and social accountability of the general US population for actions by criminals.

Gun Control

The big gun control push started in the 1970s, and the reaction to that push started in the late 1980’s and 1990’s.  Let’s look at the facts – Violence escalated during the period that progressives pushed for more control peaking around 1991. With the ongoing pushback (which is still going on) gun violence, and violence in general dropped by about 50% from 1991 to 2014.

Social Accountability

The “theory” of improving society by attacking the right of the law-abiding to have access to guns (2nd amendment issues aside) had an effect, but it was the opposite of what was expected. The theory worked UNTIL time and reality had a chance to work.

This theory had new life breathed into it with the Obama administration, and progressive leadership in cities like Washington DC and Chicago. And what happened? Reverses of a decades long downward trend in gun crime and violence in those cities year on year.

And the Results?

Is the gun control approach solely the issue? Let’s look at the social assumption that criminals should not be held accountable for their actions, after all they are simply a result of an unfair society.  Where has that led us?

Chicago was forced to cease “stop and frisk” and take a softly softly approach to policing due to a series of factors. One of which was again, putting more emphasis on restricting law enforcement’s ability to do their jobs while repeatedly refusing to enforce federal gun laws and their own sentencing guidelines. Police reduced their active enforcement through stops by 87 percent, and homicides increased 57 percent.

In Washington DC a second-chance law has allowed young (under 22) offenders to avoid minimum sentencing guidelines. Leading to skyrocketing crime and recidivism rates among those eligible for the program.

Until …

These theories of putting more emphasis on officer limitations than criminal accountability sounded great, UNTIL the victims of violent crime and homicides started rolling in.

We have had an activist justice department under Holder, based on statistical review, police department after police department has been placed under review and accused of institutional racism. Under the Obama administration several federal law enforcement arms have been instructed to NOT do their jobs. And what has this social engineering led to? Have the criminals of various stripes understood the efforts to reach out to them and understand their challenges and pain?

16 of the top 20  largest police departments in the country have seen year-over-year increases in crime. In progressive-theory-led major cities we have seen the reversal of decades of improvement in crime statistics as reported by the FBI.

I believe that the progressive movement is doomed to failure. It is unfortunate that with the media banging their policy drum day in and day out that much of the illogic of their policy positions is hidden. However, in nearly every case that sneaky little word will step up and bite them – UNTIL.