December 29, 2019
Latest progressive ‘big idea’ is so foolish it’s hard to believe they’re serious… but they are
By Thomas Lifson
Some progressive ideas sound good and seduce the young and naïve with their idealism. Socialism, for example, pretends that selfishness and indolence would not result from common ownership of the means of production. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,†was so seductive that it helped inspire communists for over a century, and still appeals to those whose needs exceed their abilities.
But some other ideas, currently being taken seriously by American progressive intellectuals are so self-evidently ridiculous that it is hard to believe that anyone could take them seriously. But this, via City Journal, is not a joke:
The latest call to action from some criminal-justice activists: “Abolish the police.†From the streets of Chicago to the city council of Seattle, and in the pages of academic journals ranging from the Cardozo Law Review to the Harvard Law Review and of mainstream publications from the Boston Review to Rolling Stone, advocates and activists are building a case not just to reform policing—viewed as an oppressive, violent, and racist institution—but to do away with it altogether. When I first heard this slogan, I assumed that it was a figure of speech, used to legitimize more expansive criminal-justice reform. But after reading the academic and activist literature, I realized that “abolish the police†is a concrete policy goal. The abolitionists want to dismantle municipal police departments and see “police officers disappearing from the streets.â€
One might dismiss such proclamations as part of a fringe movement, but advocates of these radical views are gaining political momentum in numerous cities. In Seattle, socialist city council candidate Shaun Scott, who ran on a “police abolition†platform, came within 1,386 votes of winning elected office. During his campaign, he argued that the city must “[disinvest] from the police state†and “build towards a world where nobody is criminalized for being poor.†At a debate hosted by the Seattle Police Officers Guild, Scott blasted “so-called officers†for their “deep and entrenched institutional ties to racism†that produced an “apparatus of overaggressive and racist policing that has emerged to steer many black and brown bodies back into, in essence, a form of slavery.†Another Seattle police abolitionist, Kirsten Harris-Talley, served briefly in as an appointed city councilwoman. Both Scott and Harris-Talley enjoy broad support from the city’s progressive establishment.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/latest_progressive_big_idea_is_so_foolish_its_hard_to_believe_theyre_serious_but_they_amareem.html
