Over the past eight years, elites in government, the private sector, and nonprofits have worked steadily to reshape the American experiment along progressive lines. In “The Plot to Manage Democracy,” Jacob Siegel anatomizes key elements in this project: using questionable criminal charges, or “lawfare,” against political opponents, seen most visibly against former, and perhaps future, president Donald Trump; censoring opposing views with the aid of tech platforms; co-opting traditionally neutral institutions into partisan forces; and leveraging coordinated information campaigns with a biddable media to drive narratives into the public mind. The damage this is doing should worry all citizens, regardless of party identification, warns Siegel. For Martin Gurri, these and similar developments herald “The Endarkenment,” a new period of social anomie and political distrust.
This issue includes three notable essays on crime and punishment, themes long central to City Journal. In “New York’s Youth-Crime Plague,” Hannah Meyers exposes how misguided policies have fueled an explosion in teen violence. Meyers highlights how policymakers have obscured youth-crime data, but she unpacks the troubling numbers. Steven Malanga, in “No, You’re Not Imagining a Migrant Crime Spree,” reports on the consequences of four years of open-border and sanctuary policies under President Joe Biden: illegal alien gangs running drug and theft operations, a surge in sexual predation and human trafficking, and other criminal activity. Charles Fain Lehman addresses the current bipartisan disdain for incarceration in “Build More Prisons.” He argues that, despite their flaws, prisons remain one of the few tools available to fight crime effectively.
The latest edition of our symposium series addresses the crisis of the seriously mentally ill—those suffering typically from bipolar or schizophrenic disorders, which can often be managed with proper care. But when left untreated, which is often the case, these disorders can mean broken lives and families. Our contributors—among them, City Journal’s John Hirschauer and Stephen Eide, social critic Freddie deBoer, and psychiatrist Sally Satel—offer reform proposals that would make improvements in key areas.
Ray Domanico’s “Corps Values” profiles the New Orleans Military & Maritime Academy, a marvelous public charter high school, run by professional educators and retired and noncommissioned Marines, that provides its students—many from disadvantaged backgrounds—with strong academics and a relentless emphasis on character.
In “Astoria, Always,” lifelong resident John Ketcham maintains that the Queens neighborhood is a model of urban development. Growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, Ketcham recognized the enormous civilizational wealth into which he was born: the museums, restaurants, his church, civic associations, local newspapers, and much more. Protecting this inheritance doesn’t demand stasis, but it does require sensible policies that balance change with continuity. So far, Astoria has mostly gotten the balance right. Urban super-planner Robert Moses is often described as a despotic force in New York City history. Yet, as Nicole Gelinas details in “Robert Moses, Reconsidered,” the master builder’s projects reflected the broad desires of what New York elites then wanted.
This issue has much more of interest. Heather Mac Donald’s “Europe’s Music Meritocracy” describes how local practices in Prague and Vienna continue to sustain the classical music tradition. Mathis Bitton explores the work of French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose writings prophesy societal disaster, while maintaining a complex relationship with modernity. Darran Anderson transports readers to revolutionary-era Russia, recounting how poet Anna Akhmatova faced the horrors of Communist repression at the Stray Dog Café.
—Brian C. Anderson
