“A story of liberal misgovernment on an epic scale”

Douthat’s entire article is based around “violent crime went up three hundred and sixty-seven percent between 1960 and 1980”. I was about to write something about how crime reporting rates had changed during this period, but then realized that of course no wingnut ever missed the opportunity to lie with factoids. So let’s look at this one.

U.S. “violent crime” is typically reported using FBI Uniform Crime Reports (e.g. here). From that source, the total for 1960 was 288,460; the total for 1980 was 1,344,520. The percentage increase from 1960 to 1980 obtained by using these two numbers is 366% and some; that appears to be the source of Douthat’s 367%.

But of course that’s an absolute number of crimes. It doesn’t even take into account the fact that the U.S. population went up during that period. Crime *rates* are really what’s important; if the country got a larger population but the number of crimes remained the same, that’s less average crime in the life of each person.

U.S. population statistics, taken from here, show that population in 1960 was 179 million; population in 1980 was 226.5 million. Taking the percentage increase in crime *rates* from 1960 to 1980 gives an increase of 268%. So much for wingnut arithmetic.

268% may still look like a large percentage increase. But after considering what happened to crime reporting rates during that period — well, I don’t see a need to do serious work for anyone who starts with something as bad as this.

Here is a nice graph of the homicide rate 1900-2002. (you can click on the graph to see the numbers.) Fundamentally, the big run up came 1964-1972 when it from around 5/100K to above 10/100K, where it bounced around until a sustained decline started in 1993.

OT, but interesting: the 2001 homicide rates included the 9/11 deaths.

Well, I hold no brief for Reaganite republicanism – but what about inner city housing policies? I’d certainly say that was a disaster that could be laid at the feet of managerialist liberalism in the UK? Is the story completely different in the US?

In this paragraph, perhaps this is OT or digressive? I may be a bit slow on this: is there still so much visceral revulsion at all the DFHs in the street, drugs, civil rights, economic prosperity, and progressive legislation that contributed to it?

For many, perhaps most, Americans any satisfaction was outweighed by the overwhelming sense that American society was falling apart. Crime was soaring; cities were devastated by riots; privileged youth were growing their hair, taking drugs, and having premarital sex; demonstrators were out in the streets denouncing the Vietnam War.

The Summer of Love was 40 years ago. Vietnam ended more than 30 years ago. WWII was more recent in 1970 than Woodstock is now. The murders (of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney) in Philadelphia, MS, were only 16 years distant from Reagan’s appearance there.

Is that inchoate loathing (leavened with dolschtosslegende) and the persistent reframing of “Liberalism” as some kind of feckless, immoral anarchy driving what we’re seeing?

So let’s consider: what are the real horror stories of postwar managerial liberalism going to be? What ghastly tales of liberals marching in with the best of intentions, sinking a king’s ransom in taxpayer money, and making things worse – because they debased the morals of the program recipients? When has the lightning of the Law of Unintended Consequences struck modern liberalism? I should probably go read New Republic articles from back in the day. (But surely that’s what I have you for! For some, slim value of ‘you’.)

John, are you familiar with Mickey Kaus’ concept of the “liberal cocoon”?

“Crime went up 367% between 1960 and 1980 (says Douthat). No doubt there is supposed to be an explanation of this as due to liberalism; but what, exactly? I know, I know – soft on crime. But most crime isn’t federal crime (just taking a first step here). And most liberal managerial excess is supposed to be federal. Is it supposed to be liberal judicial activism, specifically? How is liberalism supposed to be to blame for this increase?”

Well, two obvious answers suggest themselves:

First, the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions during the 1960s (Miranda being the most famous, but hardly the only one) that significantly expanded the rights of suspects, significantly limited what cops could do, and made it significantly harder to arrest and convict.

Second, the massive expansion of housing projects created environments that were tailor-made for crime (not just in the sense of encouraging criminal behavior, but more importantly, making it easy to get away with).

Those are two direct consequences of federal liberalism that might, plausibly, be linked to a sharp increase in crime.

One might also, of course, make a softer argument about the tendency of liberals in the 1960s and 1970s to downplay the importance of crime, or to explain it as a form of social rebellion. One can be justifiably skeptical of this argument, and yet it is striking to realize that in 1968, the Attorney General of the United States, and therefore the chief law-enforcement officer of the nation was Ramsey Clark, who appears never to have met a criminal he didn’t like.

But the more government you have the more epic mismanagment you’ll have, whoever is nominally directing it.

Substitute any collective endeavor of sufficient size—governmental, corporate, religious, or otherwise—and the same principle will apply. The fundamental conservative error (or deception, whichever you prefer) is believing that private enterprise is somehow exempt from Lord Acton’s dictum.

And as far as conflating the mugger and the student activist, surely the liberals of that era got there ahead of even the conservatives. The difference being that liberals saw both being driven by the social injustices liberalism was trying to alleviate, if only given enough time. Having set up itself as a common solution to these diverse ills, it was inevitable it would be blamed for all of them when progress was slow to materialize.

That spike in crime and social unrest – was it the result of liberalism or was it indeed its cause: as traditional methods failed to maintain order the elites had to try a new different approach. True, it wasn’t spectacularly successful, but at least there were no workplace and school massacres.

I’m not familiar with Kaus’ ‘coccoon’ concept, but since the guy is right about as often as a stopped digital clock, who cares? Kaus is just a convenient rightwing nut who pretends to be a liberal (as is Brooks).

Kaus’ idea (which he actually credits to a “crude right-wing rant” by one J. Peter Mulhern) is that liberal dominance of the mainstream media has actually been one of the primary sources of conservative/Republican electoral strength over the past few decades. While veritably bathing conservatives in liberal arguments–thereby forcing conservatives to confront and counter them constantly–it wraps liberals in a comfortable cocoon of ignorance that prevents them from ever having to deal with the issues that motivate voters to vote for conservatives. The result is that liberal candidates, especially at the national level, often get blindsided by electorates steaming over issues whose powerful resonance never managed to penetrate the cocoon.

Whatever else one may say about the theory, John “When has the lightning of the Law of Unintended Consequences struck modern liberalism? I should probably go read New Republic articles from back in the day” Holbo would appear to be a textbook case.

#9: “Mickey Kaus’s CONCEPT……”!!!???!!???

No, I refuse, I abso-fucking-lutely refuse.

“Kant’s concept”–fair enough; “Hegel’s concept”–do tell; “Burke’s concept”–let’s hear it; but KAUS!?

“Kaus’s notion”–too dignified.
“Kaus’s whimsey”–too pretty.
“Kaus’s anally-sourced conjecture”–too flattering.
I am at a loss.

Anyone?

You misunderstand me, John–I’m neither an ideological conservative nor a partisan Republican. (Heck, I’m not even an American.) In fact, I’m somewhat skeptical of the political significance attributed to the “liberal cocoon” concept. After all, one would hardly expect political professionals to confine themselves to such a narrow, skewed information source as the mainstream media. (They might trouble themselves to read a bit of Stan Greenberg, for instance–or is he, too, a “rightwing nut”, Barry, just like Mickey Kaus?)

But if an academic blogger discussing politics feels perfectly comfortable parading his blithe ignorance and raging uncuriosity about a fundamental aspect of modern political dynamics, knowing that he’d surely never be expected to look into sources that he finds insufficiently politically congenial, then it’s hard to deny that in some circles, at least, the “liberal cocoon” really does exist.

Never mind Kaus, clearly there was (and is) a basic political dynamic there, and everyone knows what it is: siding with (mostly) southern racists trying to crush the civil rights/anti-war movement vs. trying to manage the movement and compromise with it. Rejection of overt racism, even when racism does resonate with a large segment of the electorate, is hardly an equivalent of wrapping yourself in a “comfortable cocoon of ignorance”.

the more government you have the more epic mismanagment you’ll have

I take it you haven’t been on the London Underground lately.

The ‘liberalism’ that broke out in the 1960s was the collapse of coercive police power against the black community. In the 50s and early 60s, the Chicago cops, if they saw a black male walking in Hyde Park (where the university is) would grab him and toss him out of the neighbourhood, possibly beating him up on the way.

Coupled at the same time with the rise in unemployment in that community, and the wave of drug and alcohol problems that hit America, you had a soaring crime rate.

Latterly (from about 1966 onwards) you had the influx of cheap Southeast Asian heroin (hence the plot of the film ‘American Gangster’ which is based on a historical figure). Like crack cocaine in the late 80s, early 90s, heroin addiction brings crime in its wake. (this didn’t happen in the UK, because heroin was legally available on prescription).

Not coincidentally, you had an explosion in the number of 18-25 year old men. And of cheap guns: the ‘Zoot Suits’ used to fight with BB guns and switchblades, but by the 1960s, there were Saturday Night Specials. Read ‘Friends of Eddie Coyle’ for a feel for the gun trade (George V. Higgins was a criminal attorney in Boston during the period).

None of this was specifically about liberalism. And whilst the ‘bad architecture causes crime’ notion is a seductive one (Cabrini Green etc.) it’s never been entirely proven that it simply doesn’t displace crime.

The ghetto was an ugly and bad place before they knocked it down and built projects. In fact, projects dated back to the 1930s and the New Deal, when they were seen as progressive middle and working class homes.

The fact is crime rates rise for reasons which are very societal (a war in SE Asia leads to an influx of cheap heroin, a crackdown on Columbian pot leads to a switch to the easier to smuggle cocaine, and then someone invents crack), Baby Boom etc. rather than political activism per se. Well paying blue collar jobs begin to disappear from American life, and an obvious route out of the ghetto is blocked (after all, blacks got to the urban ghettos to leave worse conditions as sharecroppers in the Old South, to work in the war industries).

No one would reasonably want to go back to a world where racist white cops beat up black youth for stepping out of line.

Another factor is that whilst the pathology of black criminality is well known (and is partly a function of government intervention: the ‘War on Drugs’ has fallen disproportionately on black Americans**), crime *in general* rose in the 1960s and 70s, amongst white people too.

A more interesting question is why did the crime rate drop? Some answers:

– more imprisonment – the US quadrupled its prison population 1980-2000. Stephen Levitt (Freakonomics) estimates that this is less than 30% of the crime reduction

– the edogenous structure of addiction. The crack epidemic burnt itself out, partly due to the death/ imprisonment of many of the players, and also diminishing prices for street crack, which reduced the attractiveness of crack dealing as a career.

– more cops and more cops on the street making busts – certainly a factor in New York city, but doesn’t generally correlate across the country

– fewer Baby Boomers – strong evidence for. Most violent crime is committed by people 16-25 or 16-30. However doesn’t fully explain the dimensions of the crime bust.

– abortion – Levitt shows that states that introduced freer abortion laws, had earlier falls in crime. It turns out that women are smarter than we give them credence: if they don’t think they can provide the kind of home life that reduces the chance of turning to a life of crime, they abort.

– lead – lead exposure was always disproportionate in poorer, industrial areas due to industrial processes, lead paint and auto exhaust (step forward Thomas Midgely– he also invented the CFC). Lead exposure in childhood and adolescence is associated with diminished impulse control and attention deficit disorder- -both strong correlates with criminality.

Beginning in the early 1970s, the US basically phased out lead from petrol, and from paint and as an industrial effluent (mercury has yet to be done, sigh).

** It was estimated in the early 80s that a Boston car thief (Boston was famous for its car thieves) could make 4X the money by being a thief than working at McDonald’s. Criminals are wealth maximisers, just like the rest of us– risk adjusted returns looked pretty good. Street level drug dealing played a similar role in the ghetto, providing entrepreneurial opportunities to young black men– read Richard Price’s ‘Clockers’ for a feel of how this worked.

But if you are black, and you are found with a rock of crack, you will go down, in some cases for 10 years+. If you are white and you are found with cocaine, your sentence is likely to be much more lenient.

“But the more government you have the more epic mismanagment you’ll have, whoever is nominally directing it.”

Posted by Tim Worstall

Bullsh*t. The amount of government is at most an *upper bound* on the *possible* amount of epic mismanagement, and not one achieved much, although the current GOP is striving mightily.

And small government is quite capable of epic mismanagement, because ‘small government’ usually means a government which possesses a lot of killing power, and a lot of money. In the US in the 1800’s, for example, ‘small government’ was quite capable of making many peoples’ lives miserable.

Does everyone accept the 367% number?

39-

Yes, the 367% number is bullshit. But the argument wouldn’t be obviously weaker if he’d written that violent crime doubled over those two decades, which is probably true. Of course Douthat is wrong, but this one error isn’t dispositive.

Interesting the economic side is mostly ignored here. The beginning of the backlash was also the beginning of the much-discussed end of the “golden age” of postwar capitalism in the US and Europe. It was also the low point of income inequality in the US. It seems to me that the Goldwater-Reagan revolution was less a reaction against mismanaged big government (Douthat) or against the civil rights movement (Krugman) than a reaction by business against unruly & unmanageable workers.

Are you serious?

I can’t believe that in 50 years ANYTHING the Bush administration has done will have much historical significance even as an example of mismanagement.

I’m curious what role Milton Friedman and Jude Wanniski play in your analysis of conservative theory vs. movement conservatism.

Reagan beat Carter quite heavily with the inflation stick in the 1980 election. Everyone knew what it would take to stop inflation and the Fed under Reagan took the high interest rates and the recession that followed and inflation hasn’t been the same since.

Anyone who has visited New York periodically in the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s understands that the City “feels” different in terms of crime.

Why? I don’t know but I do know that Guiliani would not have been elected in the 1970’s.

I would love to hear your analysis of movement conservatism. How do you compare supporters of movement conservatism to the PAP in Singapore or the supporters of Putin or Likkud or Sarkosy or Ahmaninejad or Merkel or the BJP?

If you can’t understand how these leaders make people feel about themselves you’ll never understand movement conservatism.

“I actually thought about Rose Bird. But the very fact that we both think instantly of that name suggests to me that the phenomenon might be somewhat anecdotal. Jerry Brown is sort of an outlying data point, no?”

You are using ‘anecdotal’ in a way that I don’t really understand. The subject we are talking about is the motivations behind various mass political movements in the United States.

Empirically Rose Bird was the first California Chief Justice to lose a retention election and in fact the first California appellate judge to lose a retention election. The campaign revolved almost entirely around her approach to the criminal justice system and especially her apparent willingness to go against the law in death penalty rulings. Her case is demonstrative of popular unhappiness with two facets of 1970s liberal rule—a soft approach to crime, and judicial overreach. I’m not sure how you can take such a dramatic political event as the very first appellate non-retention in California happening to the Chief Justice of its Supreme Court as ‘anecdotal’. In politics, elections are as empirical as it gets. And in that particular election, you don’t have to look very far for the reasons behind the result.

“Jerry Brown is sort of an outlying data point, no?”

Again, no. Why do you say that? He was elected in the very largest state in the United States—a state that represents approximately one sixth of the whole country. He was later elected as the chairman of the Democratic Party. If he didn’t represent something important to the Democratic Party, why would they have elected him to that post?

And I think you are dramatically underplaying the effect of Roe v. Wade in the re-alignment. It was the defining moment for many Christian groups who had been straight-Democratic voters for decades. My parents had never voted for Republicans, and their parents had never voted for Republicans, but Roe v. Wade was the turning point that changed that. And that is anecdotal—but so far as I can tell that is the first bit of anecdotal evidence I’ve offered. You should note that empirically, the right-wing Christian movement did not get off the ground in response the Brown v. Board of Education, but did organize in response to Roe.

But that ties back to Rose Bird. Roe v. Wade was seen by almost half the nation as judicial lawlessness—a willingness to go far beyond the text of the laws in question to enact the judges personal political preferences. Rose Bird’s death penalty decisions seemed much in that vein (for the most part she didn’t bother trying to justify them, she just said ‘no’).

This is just a weird argument from Holbo, which shows that although he may be working on a “history of conservative social thought from Burke onward” or whatever, he hasn’t bothered to read much actual conservative writing from the 80s. John, start with Charles Murray, “Losing Ground”, and then look through the archives of the old “Public Interest” magazine from the late 70s through the early 90s. You’ll find endless and detailed discussion of how various liberal welfare, crime, and urban governance policies were contributing to social disorder. Whether you agree with it or not is another question, but it’s just silly to say it’s not there.

The thing is: even though I am very familiar with conservative writings and conservatism generally, there really isn’t a body of literature that addresses my (rather basic) question very well.

Unless by “very well” you mean “persuasively enough to convince John Holbo to abandon his politics”, you’re either joking or spectacularly ignorant. There’s at least one entire think-tank (the Manhattan Institute) that devotes itself largely to this topic, and that almost seems to require authorship of a book on it as a condition of fellowship. There’s also a body of work by neoliberals (the aforementioned Stanley Greenberg is one–check out his “Middle Class Dreams”–as was the mid-career Daniel Patrick Moynihan, mentioned by another commenter) that analyzes where the liberals of the sixties and seventies went wrong. If you’re really not familiar with any of this stuff, then “cocoon” is a perfectly appropriate word for your political and intellectual environment.

But did they offer an alternative that doesn’t involve mass population transfer, mass internment and mass starvation?

“Yes, the 367% number is bullshit. But the argument wouldn’t be obviously weaker if he’d written that violent crime doubled over those two decades, which is probably true. Of course Douthat is wrong, but this one error isn’t dispositive.”

No, I don’t think that you can look at it that way at all. If someone hangs an entire essay on one factoid, and determinedly gets that factoid wrong, I don’t think that you have to look at their argument any further. It shows that they aren’t capable of making their case. Maybe there’s some other conservative out there who is capable of making it. But Douthat had his chance and blew it. Of course all of conservatism is based around people never needing to care about how often they’re wrong (see Andrew Sullivan and IQ up-blog) but that doesn’t mean that people who actually think should agree with them.

I mean, look at the conservatives in this thread. Bringing up Kaus? Looking at the best possible version of what you think someone might say, rather than what they actually said, is fine if you’re trying to teach an elementary school student. But you can’t keep doing this for adults throughout their life.

The problem with supporting the conservative self-image in this way is that they completely lose touch with reality. You get people bringing up the Manhattan Institute as if the whole existence of the place wasn’t a tribute to decades-long getting a factoid wrong and then telling people that they knew what you meant. Eventually the whole bubble has to collapse.

Douthat’s 367% error was a very elementary error of a type that bright HS students are warned against. It’s not some subtlety of multivariate analysis. It really calls everything he does into question.

And why should we be surprised? His breakout article was a long whine about how he slacked through Harvard and no one there stopped him. Lots of people get great educations at Harvard, but Douthat didn’t.

“Anything for love”.

Kaus’ idea (which he actually credits to a “crude right-wing rant” by one J. Peter Mulhern) is that liberal dominance of the mainstream media has actually been one of the primary sources of conservative/Republican electoral strength over the past few decades. While veritably bathing conservatives in liberal arguments—thereby forcing conservatives to confront and counter them constantly—it wraps liberals in a comfortable cocoon of ignorance that prevents them from ever having to deal with the issues that motivate voters to vote for conservatives. The result is that liberal candidates, especially at the national level, often get blindsided by electorates steaming over issues whose powerful resonance never managed to penetrate the cocoon.

Ah yeah — I see why Kaus would claim it, because like pretty much everything the guy has cranked out, it’s stolen from somebody else, and the theft occurred when it was already a commonplace.

Seems to me that everybody from Garry Wills to Karl Hess to Hunter Thompson to John Kenneth Galbraith commented at length — and in English that’s much more competent than anything Kaus is capable of — that the old post-New Deal technocratic consensus was showing the kind of creakiness that always plagues a too-successful world view: An inability to comprehend challenges, let alone respond to them. This sort of thing might have been fresh thinking round about 1970; by 1980, with Reagan’s election, it was already a truism.

Typical of Kaus, that he’d try to claim credit for this kind of “insight”.

It turns out that women are smarter than we give them credence…

(Valuethinker #34)

Wow,that’s so big of you, VT.

“ Hmm. Perhaps there was a large age cohort passing through the criminally volatile 18-25 range round about then?”

Indeed, it’s almost as if there was some strange explosion of newborns in the years immediately after WWII – a “baby boom,” if you will . . .

Dan S, that was what I wanted to point out, but you already have, and with a lot more wit.

Also, what Down and Out said (#21).

The difference between Bush’s mismanagement of the Iraq invasion and Carter’s mismanagement of the Iran invasion is epic.

robert – didn’t you also learn that progressive arguments fall into three categories from the same Hirschman work?

“John, start with Charles Murray, “Losing Ground”,”

You could also try Murray’s “In Our Hands”. Avoid the incentive problems of welfare by simply converting the system to a citizen’s basic income.

I know, I know, Barry’s already told me that I’m “cute” for believing that might solve anything.

I wouldn’t describe Murray as “conservative”, rather more libertarian or classical liberal.

There may be other roots to it but Milton Friedman certainly spent decades arguing for a negative income tax which is another way of getting to the same thing. Again, I wouldn’t describe him as a “conservative” as that word is used in American politics today.

67-

Right you are. Same reason the EITC is one the one income-support program (many) conservatives love.

“Also, I didn’t say it couldn’t possibly have been true. I said I doubted it was true. There’s a difference there, big enough to cram in evidence, one way or another.”

Ok, but again, why do you dismiss the empirical result of actual elections that were based almost entirely on the issue in question? Why is Rose Bird’s shocking ouster an ‘anecdote’ rather than ‘evidence’?

Why is Brown an ‘outlier’ rather than a key Democratic insider?

The criticism of 1960s welfare was so strong that a Democratic president signed it, and many Democrats voted for it.

The mid-century HUD disasters are well known.

What counts as evidence here?

“People only know of Rose Bird because she was the object of successful right-wing propaganda. That propaganda was intended to camouflage racism under concern with law and order. So here we are decades later, and you’re still insisting that the camouflage was the reality, because people heard about it. But of course people hear about successful propaganda.”

Where is your proof of that? And proof to the Holbo standard of reviewed articles? You certainly don’t have that. You can win any argument by asserting that it was all coded propaganda. It is like a Freudian saying that someone is in denial. You can never prove otherwise because “no I’m not” is considered further proof of denial. As a factual matter, Rose Bird was attacked because California passed a death penalty law which she refused to carry out. This death penalty law would have killed mostly white people if she had been doing her job correctly, so the racist charge really needs a bit more support if you are using it as a serious argument. Of course I strongly suspect you aren’t using it as a serious argument–more the pseudo-intellectual equivalent of STFU, but I’ll see how you respond.