Posted on 07/19/2013 10:26:39 PM PDT by neverdem
It took only six decades of “progressive” policies to bring a great city to its knees.
By the time Detroit declared bankruptcy, Americans were so inured to the throbbing dirge of Motown’s Greatest Hits — 40 percent of its streetlamps don’t work; 210 of its 317 public parks have been permanently closed; it takes an hour for police to respond to a 9-1-1 call; only a third of its ambulances are driveable; one-third of the city has been abandoned; the local realtor offers houses on sale for a buck and still finds no takers; etc., etc. — Americans were so inured that the formal confirmation of a great city’s downfall was greeted with little more than a fatalistic shrug.
But it shouldn’t be. To achieve this level of devastation, you usually have to be invaded by a foreign power. In the War of 1812, when Detroit was taken by a remarkably small number of British troops without a shot being fired, Michigan’s Governor Hull was said to have been panicked into surrender after drinking heavily. Two centuries later, after an almighty 50-year bender, the city surrendered to itself. The tunnel from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan, is now a border between the First World and the Third World — or, if you prefer, the developed world and the post-developed world. To any American time-transported from the mid 20th century, the city’s implosion would be literally incredible: Were he to compare photographs of today’s Hiroshima with today’s Detroit, he would assume Japan won the Second World War after nuking Michigan. Detroit was the industrial powerhouse of America, the “arsenal of democracy,” and in 1960 the city with the highest per capita income in the land. Half a century on, Detroit’s population has fallen by two-thirds, and in terms of...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Ping
It’s amazing to me that a large city in this country has come to this.
Not just the bankruptcy...but (from what I have read) the utter devastation.
Of course there were towns in the past that became “ghost towns”...but this has to be one of the most exaggerated cases in our history.
Maybe it is time to have a law that public employees can only be so employed for 10 years. No exceptions. And no retirement.
Why beat a dead horse? Let Detroit rot. I sure as hell don’t want to bail them out. They got what they voted for.
All that has to be done is to do away with the public retirement system. Public employees should contribute to their own retirement like that of the private sector.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit#/?picture=370173054&index=0
Not to forget the privatization of as many public services as possible.
Copy and paste is your friend.
It's like a hard-core alcoholic, or a glue-sniffer. There's really not much else you can do.
A perfect Steyn column! Thanks for the post!
bump
here is to an astounding leftist success story
Thanks...what a sad state of affairs.
All the white firefighters were forced out and moved to other states like Florida, my retired FF hubby was telling me. He worked with many of them.
Ever wonder how it is we find all those cities buried underneath other long lost cities?
A couple of weeks ago, I read an essay by a teacher in an all black high school. He posed a question to his students “ What happens if all the white people disappear?” The answer he got was “We’re (Black people) screwed!”. Detroit is what happens on a much grander scale, as most of the whites started leaving in August 1967.
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping neverdem.
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