Jul 7, 2022·edited Jul 21, 2022Liked by Leighton Woodhouse
Portland terrorists (aka "antifas") will use ANY reason to riot.
The most recent excuse was the ill-advised SCOTUS decision on abortion that I would estimate 80% of my fellow Oregonians disagree with.
So, why are they rioting? Have women been forced to look to back alley abortionists?
No. In fact Oregon is building clinics to allow women from nearby Mountain states that are likely to "trigger" abortion prohibitions in those states.
Oregon not only has zero barriers to abortion, something I and many Oregonians agree with, but there are no barriers because of age, residency or income. In fact Oregon's State Constitution guarantees a woman's right to choice, so that absent an actual federal ban on states allowing abortion (something that exists only in the fevered imagination of radicals and Clarence Thomas) there is literally no place IN THE WORLD that makes access to abortion easier than Oregon.
So, why are they breaking windows, setting fires, and violating the law while police stand by and "observe?" Because they like burning and destroying stuff and spreading terror in a once-weird but cool community.
I was born and raised in the Bay Area and lived in San Francisco for thirty years. I moved out of state a year ago. I have children and I was very concerned for their well being and safety as they moved into adolescence. It broke my heart to leave the city that was once my home. I left behind a community of cherished friends and colleagues. I hold precious memories from my childhood to adulthood. Dinner celebrations at the Cliff House. Restaurants from North Beach to the theatre district where I’d waited tables as I worked to make ends meet while pursuing creative endeavors. Meeting my husband in the theatre. Getting married at City Hall. The birth of my own children and the years dedicated to their school and our church community. My volunteer work with a number of organizations. All in San Francisco. Sadly, I also witnessed it’s demise. I remember my then 7-year old son asking me why the man on the corner was giving himself “a shot”. Being chased by a meth head with my other son on our way home from the park on a Sunday afternoon. Walking over bodies to get to my front door with my children in tow. After personally witnessing two flash mobs raid my local Walgreens, I no longer allowed my children to come with me when they simply wanted to tag along to look in the toy section. I could no longer rationalize staying in San Francisco with the hope that things would improve. When I finally left, I didn’t move. I fled. I am homesick everyday, but the city I once loved is gone.
A lot to like in this piece. It persuasively lays out why we have laws -- that they function at a deeper and broader level than individual actions, direct damages, and individual infringements.
However, I don't think criminal laws are the only place where this idea that rules exist to reinforce social order obtains. While it's fairly (and importantly) explicit in the case of criminal law, this principle is true in virtually every social situation. If one is a teacher learning classroom management, one learns the value of defining rules clearly and always enforcing them: it creates a cohesive expectation of behavior within the classroom. Punishing those who break the rules isn't (just) about stopping the individual from breaking the rules; it's about ensuring everyone understands the rules will be enforced. The same is true for business leaders. The same is also true for contract law -- you're probably not going to find a lot more people who think it's okay to give your word -- including your signature -- that you will do something, and then break that word than you will people who think it's okay to maim your neighbor. If breaking a contract is not punished, then contracts have no value. The difference in criminal laws is that if they are broken, safety has no value. It's a matter of severity of consequence more than a matter of which one damages society and which one does not.
It is, in a pretty real way, the way society forces its values onto itself. These values are not set in stone, and they are not set once and then forgotten. They are constantly set and reset collectively. When society no longer forces its values onto itself, society coherence dissolves. Social order is not inevitable. This is something that conservatives have understood intuitively for a very long time. While I don't share all the values conservatives would like society to enforce in a lot of cases, there's a sort of desire for order inherent within conservatism. (This is one of the reasons why I dislike the conservative / progressive-liberal "scale" and division, as if a person is *either* conservative *or* progressive / liberal. We all have elements of all within ourselves and our ideas.)
I sympathize with the critique here of the New Left. The need to publicly punish and shame is an important social ordering function. But I think everyone is abandoning how deterrence used to function in less alienated societies. Potential offenders were actively surveillance by local family and neighbors. The decay of urban America is linked to absence of meaningful, normal surveillance and intervention because good folks are simply to terrified to intervene with strangers (in large part) because guns are everywhere. There is more to the stranger conflict issue, but it is uniquely bad in the U.S.
I’ve often wondered about the semantic difference between words like ‘vengeance’ and ‘justice’ or ‘punishment’ and ‘discipline,’ Revenge, while certainly what many in society seem to seek, always felt like the wrong goal, but it might be the semantic difference is too fine to put a point on. Does Durkheim have anything to say about that?
Portland terrorists (aka "antifas") will use ANY reason to riot.
The most recent excuse was the ill-advised SCOTUS decision on abortion that I would estimate 80% of my fellow Oregonians disagree with.
So, why are they rioting? Have women been forced to look to back alley abortionists?
No. In fact Oregon is building clinics to allow women from nearby Mountain states that are likely to "trigger" abortion prohibitions in those states.
Oregon not only has zero barriers to abortion, something I and many Oregonians agree with, but there are no barriers because of age, residency or income. In fact Oregon's State Constitution guarantees a woman's right to choice, so that absent an actual federal ban on states allowing abortion (something that exists only in the fevered imagination of radicals and Clarence Thomas) there is literally no place IN THE WORLD that makes access to abortion easier than Oregon.
So, why are they breaking windows, setting fires, and violating the law while police stand by and "observe?" Because they like burning and destroying stuff and spreading terror in a once-weird but cool community.
I was born and raised in the Bay Area and lived in San Francisco for thirty years. I moved out of state a year ago. I have children and I was very concerned for their well being and safety as they moved into adolescence. It broke my heart to leave the city that was once my home. I left behind a community of cherished friends and colleagues. I hold precious memories from my childhood to adulthood. Dinner celebrations at the Cliff House. Restaurants from North Beach to the theatre district where I’d waited tables as I worked to make ends meet while pursuing creative endeavors. Meeting my husband in the theatre. Getting married at City Hall. The birth of my own children and the years dedicated to their school and our church community. My volunteer work with a number of organizations. All in San Francisco. Sadly, I also witnessed it’s demise. I remember my then 7-year old son asking me why the man on the corner was giving himself “a shot”. Being chased by a meth head with my other son on our way home from the park on a Sunday afternoon. Walking over bodies to get to my front door with my children in tow. After personally witnessing two flash mobs raid my local Walgreens, I no longer allowed my children to come with me when they simply wanted to tag along to look in the toy section. I could no longer rationalize staying in San Francisco with the hope that things would improve. When I finally left, I didn’t move. I fled. I am homesick everyday, but the city I once loved is gone.
A lot to like in this piece. It persuasively lays out why we have laws -- that they function at a deeper and broader level than individual actions, direct damages, and individual infringements.
However, I don't think criminal laws are the only place where this idea that rules exist to reinforce social order obtains. While it's fairly (and importantly) explicit in the case of criminal law, this principle is true in virtually every social situation. If one is a teacher learning classroom management, one learns the value of defining rules clearly and always enforcing them: it creates a cohesive expectation of behavior within the classroom. Punishing those who break the rules isn't (just) about stopping the individual from breaking the rules; it's about ensuring everyone understands the rules will be enforced. The same is true for business leaders. The same is also true for contract law -- you're probably not going to find a lot more people who think it's okay to give your word -- including your signature -- that you will do something, and then break that word than you will people who think it's okay to maim your neighbor. If breaking a contract is not punished, then contracts have no value. The difference in criminal laws is that if they are broken, safety has no value. It's a matter of severity of consequence more than a matter of which one damages society and which one does not.
It is, in a pretty real way, the way society forces its values onto itself. These values are not set in stone, and they are not set once and then forgotten. They are constantly set and reset collectively. When society no longer forces its values onto itself, society coherence dissolves. Social order is not inevitable. This is something that conservatives have understood intuitively for a very long time. While I don't share all the values conservatives would like society to enforce in a lot of cases, there's a sort of desire for order inherent within conservatism. (This is one of the reasons why I dislike the conservative / progressive-liberal "scale" and division, as if a person is *either* conservative *or* progressive / liberal. We all have elements of all within ourselves and our ideas.)
I sympathize with the critique here of the New Left. The need to publicly punish and shame is an important social ordering function. But I think everyone is abandoning how deterrence used to function in less alienated societies. Potential offenders were actively surveillance by local family and neighbors. The decay of urban America is linked to absence of meaningful, normal surveillance and intervention because good folks are simply to terrified to intervene with strangers (in large part) because guns are everywhere. There is more to the stranger conflict issue, but it is uniquely bad in the U.S.
Nice piece! Well argued and defended.
I’ve often wondered about the semantic difference between words like ‘vengeance’ and ‘justice’ or ‘punishment’ and ‘discipline,’ Revenge, while certainly what many in society seem to seek, always felt like the wrong goal, but it might be the semantic difference is too fine to put a point on. Does Durkheim have anything to say about that?