Detroit: The City That Liberalism Ruined

by Rich Lowry - March 31st, 2008 - Townhall.com

Detroit suffers from every possible malady except a plague of locusts, and that's only because they find urban living uncongenial. The city has a revitalized downtown, but all around it, the city rots. Forbes magazine declared Detroit "America's Most Miserable City," on the basis of its unemployment and crime rates, among other things. The unemployment rate of 8.2 percent is the highest of any major urban area in the nation, and its homicide rate is higher than New York's in the bad old days of the early 1990s.

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what. Detroit compounded them with disastrous governance . . .

The most serious harm done to America in the last century was not the attempt by Japan and Germany to defeat us militarily. It was the Jimmy Carter Presidency. Americans failed to appreciate the damage that could quickly be done by a leading public official who believed in socialism. Jimmy Carter couched his good intentions in Christianity, forgetting the admonition to keep government and the church separate when Jesus said "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s". Though ambiguous, it has long been held consistent with the premise that God grants man free will. Thus trying to do God's work through government edict is wrong. If God grants free will, how can anyone try and use the force of government to demand that people do "good works" under the threat of police power.

It is additionally true that it never works anyway. Socialism has been tried repeatedly under many different versions and it ultimately fails when the power to do good is perverted to do evil. Power in the hands of government will always deteriorate into evil.

Now we have many people who are hailing Barack Obama as the new messiah. He opens many of his speeches with a proclamation of Chrisitan piety. Yet he attends a church that openly and emphatically embraces racism, something that is not compatible with the vision he projects. I personally think that if he is elected, it will not matter in the long run. Like the racist leaders of Detroit, any attempt to rule this nation that does not avoid racist sentiments . . . or socialism . . . will end in disaster just as Carter's Presidency. Today, Jimmy Carter is a joke to most people. Detroit is a joke to most people. For the same reason. Both failed miserably.

America is a nation that loves success. They will try things. However those things must work. Socialism does not work and thus Obama is condemned to fail because he does not understand that doing good works is the role of church, not government. His socialist goals will be a disaster when he tries to put them in practice.