R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s article is titled, “Rahm, I tried to warn you,” — and here are its opening paragraphs:
Chicago has always struck me as one of the most affluent cities in the world. Growing up in Chicagoland I saw little poverty in the city at the foot of glistening Lake Michigan. I am sure poverty was there, but Chicago in the 1960s seemed rich and abundant with opportunity. Alas, that was long ago. Chicago is still affluent at least on its north side and in the environs around Michigan Avenue, the city’s Magnificent Mile. Yet, statistics tell us something different when we consider Chicago as a whole. Its poor neighborhoods are desperate.
Read the headlines from the city that two generations of Daleys governed effectively. Young males, usually blacks, are dying on the streets often from run-ins with the police. For a certitude, they are acting recklessly, carrying weapons, often knives and guns, but the cops are acting aggressively. Just the other day a young man, agitated and carrying a baseball bat, was shot to death by a cop. Obviously Chicago cops are dangerous. Moreover, city government seems to be covering up for them.
Chicago, certainly in its impoverished neighborhoods, is a city out of control. There is a rising call for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s scalp. In 2010 I returned to my hometown and took an interest in Emanuel’s first race for mayor. I even threatened to run against the Godfather, as he is called, to liven things up. Frankly, I could not believe Rahm would really be interested in serving as the city’s mayor. Chicago was already on the verge of ruin. If I were to run it would be to run a heuristic exercise in politics similar to Bill Buckley’s campaign for mayor of New York in 1965, hoping to educate the local pols on the value of non-governmental alternatives to their policies that had obviously become mired in government, bureaucracy, and failure. Rahm and I could debate “the urban crisis” in terms very similar to the way “the urban crisis” of the 1960s was debated. Things really have not changed that much.
Read more: American Spectator
Image credit: www.spectator.org/Rahm Emanuel and Bob Tyrrell.
