Rich Lowry, Real Clear Politics:
President Obama responded to the Baltimore riots with a heartfelt bout of self-righteous hectoring.
Supposedly, we all know what’s wrong with Baltimore and how to fix it, but don’t care enough. Not only is this attitude high-handed, it rests on a flagrantly erroneous premise.
President Obama doesn’t have the slightest idea how to fix Baltimore. His solutions fall back on liberal bromides going back 50 years.
Dating back to the Kerner Commission after the riots of the 1960s, the left’s go-to solution to urban problems has been more social programs. Since then, we’ve gotten more social programs — and just as many urban problems.
Exhibit A is Baltimore itself. The city hasn’t been “neglected.” It has been misgoverned into the ground.
It is a Great Society city that bought fully into the big-government vision of the 1960s, and the bitter fruit has been corruption, violence and despair.
We don’t know all the facts surrounding Freddie Gray’s tragic death. But as a general matter, it is easy to believe that the Baltimore police are corrupt, dysfunctional and unaccountable — because most of the Baltimore government is that way.
More.
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