Where Is England's Giuliani?

Judith Weiss, celebrating her fifth year in the Blogosphere, is really on a roll. First, she captures this moment, which simultaneously sums up both elements of Charles Krauthammer’s best-known aphorism. Next, she notes that England as a whole is caught in the same Death Wish phase that American cities found themselves trapped in during the 1970s, liberalism’s zenith:

Britain seems to be reinventing the wheel that the urban citizens in the US painfully constructed in the 1970s: the idea that being endlessly forbearing and understanding about criminals and bullies does not produce justice; rather a refusal to judge, and to judge harshly when necessary, encourages injustice toward the most vulnerable and tears asunder any fabric of communal responsibility.

Judith writes, “I am struck by how badly the UK needs a Rudy Giuliani”, and I have that thought whenever I visit San Francisco, as I did yesterday. Which makes sense–given the attitudes of its elites, San Francisco is essentially an enclave of the EU in a much more conservative nation. And the regions that need someone who takes crime as seriously as Giuliani are also the least likely to vote for someone like him. (Which is also a reminder of how badly Manhattan had to fall before the blue nose proto-bobos of Manhattan in the early 1990s could hold their nose and vote for a Republican.)