Detroit in RUINS! (Going Ghetto)

[_ajax18]

The Union of Soviet Socialists Republics is the usual outcome of leftist rule when untethered from any constitutional or rule of law-based restraints on the concentration of unaccountable power and the pursuit of their utopian fantasies of "fairness" and "equity."

I actually think this country would be even worse than Russia. I'd compare it more along the lines of Greece or Venezuela.

Yeah, there are other factors than liberalism. But the biggest reason Detroit is a ghost town now is that the unions have bargained themselves out of a job.

[_Quasimodo]

Even Snake Plisskin might think twice before going through the Motor City on a typical Friday or Saturday night.

Indeed, Detroit is a textbook example of what happens to a city and its people when leftists are allowed to govern in a virtually unrestrained fashion for a long enough period of time. A number of other major U.S. urban areas have shared Detroit's fate, albeit not to the same extent (yet).

The Union of Soviet Socialists Republics is the usual outcome of leftist rule when untethered from any constitutional or rule of law-based restraints on the concentration of unaccountable power and the pursuit of their utopian fantasies of "fairness" and "equity."

You might want to check out the crime rates in those evil socialist countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, Canada, etc. and compare them to the U.S.

[_EAllusion]

So here's a challenge for the liberals and conservatives on this board:

Liberals, what is the US city that serves as the best example of a liberal city?

From my experience, liberals will generally cite one of these cities:

Austin, Texas,
Madison, WI
San Fran/Berkeley, CA
Boulder, CO
Ann Arbor, MI
NY, NY
Portland, OR
Burlington, VT
Santa Fe, NM

Others might appear, but I think those cities are well known liberal hubs that each have a lot to offer that ties into liberal politics. Though, really, any many university towns probably are going to qualify. Part of the problem here is that almost all urban areas range from very liberal on one end to moderate on the other. Name a gem of a city and it's probably at least somewhat liberal because cities tend to be liberal. So when you ask for a good and poor conservative ideal, it's actually hard to come up with any examples of conservative cities relative to US politics period. Colorado Springs? Provo? They're just aren't that many. What liberals are likely to have in mind for an object of criticism is conservative states like Mississippi, Alabama, etc.

[_ajax18]

You might want to check out the crime rates in those evil socialist countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, Canada, etc. and compare them to the U.S.

I noticed that you didn't include Venezuela in your list.

[_Droopy]

You might want to check out the crime rates in those evil socialist countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England, Canada, etc. and compare them to the U.S.

You're decades out of the loop here. Crime rates (and the pervasive "yob" culture paralleling our inner city underclass) have skyrocketed in the U.K. during and since the 90s, and rates have risen in Scandinavia as well. Our own stratospheric rise in violent and property crime only began in the middle 60s, metastasized through the 70s and 80s, and flattened out a bit and decreased somewhat through the 90s and 2000nds. The entire, unprecedented leap in crime and incivility coincided precisely with the rise of:

1. The Great Society welfare state
2. The sexual revolution.
3. The relentless attack by the western intelligentsia/media/Hollywood Axis upon marriage, family, motherhood and fatherhood, men and boys, and traditional moral boundaries.
4. Radical feminism
5. The drug culture.
6. The progressively expanding cultural Marxist attack upon the entire Western liberal democratic and Judeo-Christian tradition through public education, media, and the academy.

Socialism, and leftist ideology and governance more broadly, gestate and entrench high levels of criminality and civil breakdown over time, in some cultures sooner or more acutely than others, and in somewhat different ways in different cultural settings, for the same fundamental reasons, the core of which is the subversion, dismantling, and destruction of the family, religion, and the concept of absolute right and wrong and the moral boundaries and internal controls on behavior and motives that flow from acceptance of such concepts.

Leftist philosophy and socialist ideology also break down and erase the cause and effect relationship between work and reward and blur the lines between one's own and others property, creating, inevitably and in time, a sense of "right" or entitlement to the property, wealth, time, and labor of one's fellow citizens and a since of "right" in violently taking the property of others, either by personal force or, more commonly, contracting with a third party (the state) through the voting booth to vicariously take and redistribute the property of others by force in one's stead.

Socialism has been defined as "theft," and a social/political system grounded heavily in such attitudes and values can only become ever more coarsened and vicious as the "have nots" are told they have not because the "haves" have, and that the earned property of others somehow "rightfully" belongs to them ("the rich" got to the big pile of money a bit sooner and took more than their "fair share").

Earning a living through hard work and investment becomes a game for suckers, and the role of entrepreneur and businessman becomes a moral black mark, by definition. The moral boundary between "mine" and "thine" disappears in the minds of vast numbers of the population (including union members clinging to the gravy train with a vengeance) and is replaced by the "entitlement mentality" and the zero-sum perception of economics and of life itself.