There are so many ways to approach the intractable problems that pertain to “public property” that I could write for ten years about nothing else. However, events in McKinney, Texas, coupled to similar developments in and around various American cities, have brought one especially troubling aspect of the matter to the forefront of my attention.
Pour yourself another cup of coffee, Gentle Reader. I’m feeling particularly circumlocuitous today.
Imagine for a moment that you’re the baron over a medieval fief. The responsibility that comes with that position includes keeping the peace in your realm. Believe it or not, most medieval nobles took that job seriously, and did what they could to suppress violence and predation within their domains. Sometimes, they had to get creative to do so.
Now imagine that your region is beset by marauding robber-knights: men who have acquired mounts, weapons, and armor, and are using them to plunder your common folk. You could, of course, mobilize the knights sworn to your service and send them out a-hunting. That might work...but it would involve bloodshed, significant costs, and probable collateral damage to the lands and properties around you. So you hunt for a more agreeable approach while you keep that sort of direct confrontation in reserve.
You could attempt to entice the robber-knights into your service, putting them nominally under your authority and that of your captains. Again, that might ameliorate matters...but it’s unlikely that all would accept your service, and very likely that among those who do accept it there would be some who would simply go on as they’d begun – except that they would also have “the color of law” at their backs. As that would blacken your reputation, and possibly even invite intervention by your liege lord the king, you reject that approach categorically.
But wait...what’s this? The local prelate has just announced a fresh Crusade! Splendid! That provides a new possibility: you could export the troublemakers as part of the Crusade army. Yes, there would be costs, but any bloodshed would take place outside your demesne. Nor would any odium for their deeds attach to you...at least, not directly enough to matter. Capital! So you have the prelate’s announcement trumpeted far and wide, add financial resources of your own to the Crusade fund, and watch as the marauders, their minds alight with the prospect of a salary for bringing plunder and rape to a foreign land, form up to board ships bound for the Holy Land.
That was a significant part of the dynamic that powered the later Crusades, particularly the ones of the 14th Century. The nobles of France and Italy, while some of them did join the expeditions along with groups of their loyal retainers, were assiduous about exporting their troublemakers in this fashion. As a regional peacekeeping measure, it worked fairly well.
Imagine how it would work if applied here in the United States. Of course, we’d have to identify the predators and entice them to go a-hunting elsewhere. We’d also have to choose an “elsewhere” to which they’d be sent. However, the cries of “racism” that would result would cause political tremors of serious magnitude. Worse, if we were to use the armed forces as the vehicle for this, there would be international blowback from it, possibly far more serious than any national gains in peace and prosperity would justify. Given the amorality of our political class, those considerations are probably why they haven’t yet tried it.
That doesn’t mean that others aren’t trying something comparable.
A public facility is, by definition, one intended for use by the public, albeit upon conditions. There might be a residency requirement. There might be a fee to be paid, which would go to the maintenance of the facility. There might be conditions of deportment to be observed; indeed, there almost certainly would be. Meet those conditions and you gain admittance.
Imagine yourself to be a town supervisor or county executive contemplating a proposal for a new public facility, perhaps a public swimming pool. The idea is superficially attractive, especially since it would tap state or federal funds while still providing a pretext for new taxes and fees. Demographics now come into play. What sort of populace would use the facility? Is that populace inclined toward public discipline or public disorder? Should corrective measures be necessary – e.g., the invocation of the police to quell a disturbance – would the consequences be likely to affect you adversely? Would there be negative media coverage, perhaps even big-ticket lawsuits? Where would the balance fall between “public good” – i.e., favorable reactions toward you for creating the facility – and unintended, undesired consequences, of which there are guaranteed to be some?
If you have an unruly, troublemaking demographic to deal with, you might prefer that a neighboring town or county build the facility. You could then export your troublemakers to that neighbor and let him deal with the consequences. This is a particularly attractive approach if the history of public facilities in your domain is marred by high costs, disorder, and violence. (It’s also attractive if your neighbor is a political thorn in your flesh.)
Political decisions about facilities such as swimming pools open to the public often turn on exactly those considerations.
No doubt the thought processes delineated above sound venal. They are venal; that’s politics in the “democratic” era. They’re also quite commonplace among a political elite whose members are generally without moral scruples and deem themselves to be above law and justice. The only thing that countervails them is public sentiment. That’s why politicians labor ceaselessly to gain control over the media, and why the Internet is such a threat to their little ways.
Public facilities sited in predominantly black neighborhoods have a very poor history. They tend to deteriorate much faster than similar facilities in white neighborhoods. That gives rise to demands for external funding for replacement and repair (and cries of “racism” from idiots). It also gives rise to informal “emigration:” the unruly ones who trashed the facility tend to seek out other, nearby neighborhoods whose facilities are well maintained.
I don’t need to describe what happens thereafter, do I, Gentle Reader? Colin Flaherty has already done an excellent job of it. The black intruders are usually treated as victims of “racism,” sometimes at the hands of “racist police.” The media’s coverage is consistently slanted against the predominantly white communities that experience the consequences. The Chicago Tribune’s recent diatribe on the “sad, racist history” of public swimming pools is a typical case.
And those who continue to get their news from the Main Stream Media swallow it hook, line, and sinker, while an objective reporter who merely presents the facts, sometimes with historical foundations that suggest the causes of such disturbances, is treated as Public Enemy #1.
In April 2007, when I wrote that the media are deeply complicit in race-based troubles in modern America:
Journalists who downplay or conceal inter-racial crimes out of the mistaken notion that they're helping to avert further hostility are either deluded or hopelessly stupid. By furthering the conviction among private citizens that we're being lied to, they advance the concomitant conviction that "the other," about whose deeds we're being denied full and accurate reports, really is someone to be feared...someone to be located and destroyed, or cast out of our midst, for our own safety's sake.Thus, whatever their conscious motives and intentions, politically correct journalists who spike stories about horrific crimes by black perpetrators are the new segregationists. It is their decisions about which stories should be emphasized and which ones must be buried that will persuade white Americans that their black neighbors cannot be trusted and must be expelled from the body politic.
...I was as yet unaware of the full dimensions of the plague of racial violence, always black-on-white, that had erupted in our large cities. It was some time before I learned even the outlines thereof. It was not a pleasant experience.
To what extent are white liberals, invincibly resistant to admitting that such violence emerges from black racism, complicit in the problem? To what extent does:
- Their denial of the racial aspects of the “knockout game;”
- Their acceptance of clearly biased media coverage of racial incidents;
- Their kowtowing toward “black spokesmen” such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton;
- Their refusal to allow that American blacks have the primary responsibility for the problem, owing to rampant black illegitimacy, black welfare dependency, and lax discipline of young blacks;
...exacerbate the increasing resentment of American whites and Orientals over being blamed for racial clashes such as McKinney?
And to what extent is the intensifying reluctance of white voters to approve the construction of public recreational facilities and private gathering places such as enclosed shopping malls due to white neighborhoods’ awareness of the proximity of large, mobile black communities?
Think it over.
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