"Re-Breaking the Windows"

The headline is Heather Mac Donald’s take on new York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Here’s her fuller take:

Bill de Blasio won the mayoralty of New York by running a demagogic campaign against the New York Police Department. He has now compounded the injury by dropping the city’s appeal of an equally deceitful court opinion that found that the department’s stop, question, and frisk practices deliberately violated the rights of blacks and Hispanics. De Blasio may thus have paved the way for a return to the days of sky-high crime rates.

The civil libertarian in me has issues with stop & frisk, but the court’s decision seemed iffy and likely to lose on appeal — which de Blasio strategically dropped. Besides, we have a federal system because what might be workable and even permissible in New York would get treated with a gun and a quiet word here in Colorado.

That aside, NYC is likely to prove a delightful taste case for fully-blown progressivism. First we had the mild center-right progressivism of Mayor Mike and his silly soda bans. But now comes de Blasio and the hard left.

Good and hard.