"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

And the Democrats are determined to not understand, or not remember, history. When Stores Close Due To Rising Crime, Urban Blight Is Back

We've gone down this path before for virtually the exact same bleeding-heart reasons, and we lived through the tremendous pain of the results.

Walgreens is closing stores in San Francisco. Target is changing hours. Because theft has become a major problem. Why? Because enforcing laws is unfair. Or something.

We are back in the mode where the "elite," credentialed experts, are in charge. They didn't like Broken Windows policing. But then most of them were not alive (or were not adults) during the period before Broken Windows, when crime was insane.

There were other things they didn't like in the 1960s, like “eyes on the street” theory of crime prevention. Things would be fine if only the elites were in charge. And then we got the 1980s and 1990s.

More than 50 years later, over-credentialed activists and politicians once again say they know better, and tell us our neighborhoods will be more just and “equitable” if we don’t enforce laws. Now business owners are telling those politicians they’ll need to close their doors. Residents are left to feel the pain of both the crime and the closures. The boon of life and appreciation is suffocating.

Crime begets crime begets crime, and changes to enforcement and prosecution policies are entirely to blame. In nearby Oakland, where murder is up 90 percent in the past year and car-jackings up 88 percent while the city council continues to cut police, city leaders dismiss the surge in crime as “a bump in the road,” but for the people who live there, strive to work there, and try to not be murdered there, it’s more than that.

If that is a "bump in the road, then in the words of Scotty (from Star Trek), "It gets bumpy from here."

Urban planners and their vision for how we should live, always brings up thoughts of Pruit-Igoe.

Here is the excerpt from the film Koyaanisqatsi. The first 4 and a half minutes show Pruit-Igoe shortly before it was razed via explosive demolition. You can almost see the artist's rendition before it was built. Green space. Parks. Playing children. The reality didn't work out so well.

Pruit-Igoe, officially the Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, were constructed in 1951 thru 1955. They consisted of more than 2800 apartments, on 57 acres in St. Louis, MO. The first building was demolished in 1972, and the remaining buildings in the following years, with the last building coming down in 1976.

The quote that forms the title to this post comes from Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1, George Santayana.