OPINION:
Democrats have lost another issue. They had hoped to tie President Trump to “ungentlemanly behavior” at Jeffrey Epstein’s “Love Island,” but no less a character witness than Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s procurer of underage girls and young women, has told Justice Department interviewers from prison that Mr. Trump always acted appropriately in her presence.
Some Democrats had accused Mr. Trump of using National Guard troops to reduce crime in the District of Columbia to distract from the Epstein issue. They will have to move on to something else after numerous failures to smear him.
The president takes credit for what he says is the virtual elimination of crime in the District. He has suggested that Chicago may be the next target for federal troops, with possibly more cities run by Democrats and harmed by out-of-control crime to follow.
This has at least three responses. First, federal troops have no business patrolling and policing American cities and people. Second, voters who elect the mayors and in some cases district attorneys and judges who seem more on the side of criminals than their victims got what they deserve. I’m for No. 3.
Third, crime will virtually disappear in the District and other cities with no cash bail, district attorneys who reduce serious offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, sanctuary cities that protect violent criminals, and other efforts to falsely claim crime is down. If all this is done and crime is still a problem, then send in the troops, at least temporarily.
However, troops can serve only as a pause button. Numerous studies dating back to the report on what was called, in the language of that day, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” by Assistant Labor Secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan, have repeatedly exposed the roots of crime among minorities in urban areas. Sadly, these are mostly the perpetrators and the victims of crime.
From the report Moynihan prepared for President Johnson: “The gap between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening. The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure. The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.”
Johnson responded, as most Democrats do, by throwing money at the problem through what he called The Great Society. It solved little, as crime and poverty continued. Democrats remain opposed to policies such as school choice (which is spreading anyway) that would give especially minority children trapped in underperforming schools an opportunity to receive a real education and a start toward a good life.
Back to the main problem and the solution. According to the America First Policy Institute, “The United States has the highest rate of children in single-parent households of any nation in the world. There are over 18 million fatherless children in the US. Fathers are absent from approximately 80% of single-parent homes. Fatherless families are 4x more likely to live in poverty than that for married-couple families. Fatherless children are more likely to abuse drugs and show signs of delinquent behavior.”
Inoculating young people with what used to be called “the fear of God” rather than the fear of troops might also work to reduce crime.
Richard Nixon rode a “tough on crime” strategy to the presidency, but it didn’t last because he couldn’t rebuild the family from the White House. Although Mr. Trump’s intervention in major cities may put a patch on the crime problem, little is likely to change when the troops are removed.
I have quoted her many times (and she thanked me for keeping it alive), but the late first lady Barbara Bush was correct when she said: “Your success as a family … our success as a nation … depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”
No politician or troops can make that happen.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).
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