View Comments |  Print This Post |

Once vilified Daniel Patrick Moynihan, before he became a famous senator, got it right a long, long time ago, about root causes of black-on-anybody crimes.  Obama "gets it" but a Twin Cities liberal newspaper does not.  Read on,  and weep.

It happened in the parking lot of the popular Twin Cities theme park, Valleyfair, just after midnight of the Fourth of July. A man, his wife and their three daughters are leaving after an evening on thrill rides such as Wild Thing and Renegade.

Out of the shadows steps a “young man” who grabs the couple's 12-year-old daughter. What happened next is shocking:

Shakopee, MN (AP) – A father who tried to protect his 12-year-old daughter after she was groped while leaving Valleyfair amusement park was beaten, stomped in the face and kicked by a group of young men, police said . . . He suffered skull fractures and possible bleeding on the brain . . . Six men ranging in age from 18 to 22 have been charged with third-degree felony assault. A 14-year old boy was also charged.

While the father, 41, fights grave injuries in a hospital, the punks are freed by posting outrageously low bails. The victims' name, even their city of residence, are kept secret lest the thugs intimidate, or try to kill them. What a country, huh? Liberty if not justice, for . . . all?

The chief thug calls “homies” on a a cell phone asking for help to “get these bitches.” By now, even not-so alert readers will recognize the race of the seven thugs.

(Rap song lyric: “Yo me an my homies f—– up that wanksta last night . . .” Loose translation: We beat up a wannabe gang member, a “wanksta,” for fun last night.)

The horrified wife and three now-traumatized forever daughters scream as the attack rages. They try to stop it. Amusement park security (so to speak) is not to be found, despite the night-piercing screams.

Stunned passerbys, unarmed, do nothing. (Think Kitty Genovese.) Being armed might have made a difference, yes? (“NO FIREARMS” say signs at the park's gates — whether an individual is permitted to carry, or not. It's state law.)

Among the attackers is a 14-year-old. The other six, all adults, are called “youths” in some accounts, as if to excuse by age, their third-degree felony assault on an innocent man protecting his daughter.

Snickering, the seven randomly punch other Valleyfair-goers as they merrily leave the scene. Why? Fulfill gangsta rappers' song lyrics? Bragging rights in the 'hood? God knows.

After 13 days of silence, the liberal daily Star Tribune weighs in editorially. Properly horrified, it rationalizes the crime, finding all sorts of usual suspects as causes. What's missing? These “young people” inhabit a far-off, inbred, hell-bent criminal class, a world of their own, apart from civilized society. No care about others' rights. Despite similar attacks, such as on Twin Cities bus and taxi drivers, the editorial would have us believe “. . . in the big picture, such brutal attacks are relatively rare.” Oh, really? Don't they read their own newspaper?

The piece [“More violence, more questions,” on July 17] pleads for colorblindness. Mount Olympus-like, it warns mere mortals and peons not to give in to “fear, ignorance and racism.” Knee-jerk cries of “racist,” or hints and allegations of same, are reserved it seems, for all who dare call attention to the races of the criminals. That's the subtext of Star Tribune's message.

If white thugs molested a 12-year-old black girl, and beat her black father to a pulp, there would be hell to pay. Rev. Jesse Jackson would be on the first flight to the Twin Cities, full of bluster and casting blame on others, always others. He might be followed by the Rev. Al Sharpton, another discredit to the cloth; he's looking for the nearest microphone.

This duo, called leaders sometimes, might call for boycotts (Valleyfair) or claim the beat-up victim “asked for it,” his daughter did, or that local cops got it all wrong, or the wrong guys. Something, anything. Any excuse in a racial storm. Blame, blame, blame the other guy. (Remember Tawana Brawley?) Certainly the assault at Valleyfair would be called a hate crime, worthy of a special place in hell for such hoodlums if not African-Americans.

In a bold stroke of realism, the Minneapolis editorial wonders: “. . . why some of the accused . . . weren't in jail for previous offenses.” Silly, silly. It's the courts, stupid. Easy bail, lax sentencing, early release, revolving jail doors. Judges without pity for society, Lance Ito-like, unsympathetic to unlucky victims. Giving third and fourth chances to hard, remorseless criminals to whom the very word rehabilitation, is a big joke.

Investigation into the thugs' records — NOT by the newspaper, but by Power Line, a widely-read local blog — reflects many are, not were, career criminals. Their rap sheets are dotted with arrests, convictions for prostitution, for armed robbery. Why are we not surprised?

Six started their crime lives early in their teens — same as the 14-year-old they initiated that awful night. Some perps had done time. One, just out of jail. Some are related by blood or marriage, part of a crime family, prostitution its core business. Again, why are we not surprised by all this?

(Aside: Why were their police records NOT dug up and reported by the Star Tribune? Did political correctness based on race, figure into non-reporting on-the-record facts?)

By not reporting facts, it's as if an invisible shield descended, inducing a willful blindness to reality, even to danger. If the attackers were white or Asian — say, Hmong — their criminal records would be dug up in a flash, and duly reported. Headlines would spread the word: “Six Hmong in park assault had lengthy rap sheets.” Race matters only sometime.

Predictably the editorial urges “increased funding for education, health and antipoverty efforts.” Tossing more taxpayer dollars into “antipoverty efforts,” this will do the trick, finally? Dreamers. Remember the Great Society? Enforced education, it is submitted, is another matter, offering hope out of despair. It can work if tried, really tried. Vouchers to the rescue? Oh yes, run that one by the unions.

Barack Obama's quotes spice up the editorial. Conveniently, the candidate (the newspaper's shoo-in for certain endorsement, no matter what) is quoted as “. . . challenging the black community . . . to do better.” (Great! And shades of Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly, et al. Why not quote these distinguished eminent hyphenated Americans? Oh, that's right; it's campaign time. Shilling for Obama, expect a lot of it from now until November from media ga-ga over Obama.) 

“We have to demand more responsibility from Washington,” Obama adds, a line from the campaign. (Washington? Of course. Shorthand for more government programs.)

“And yes,” Obama says, “we have to demand more responsibility from Wall Street.” (Wall Street? Is this some sort of a joke? Blaming “the Street” for crime in the streets?)

“But [sic] we also [sic] have to demand more from ourselves,” Obama adds. Ourselves. Think of it! Ourselves. BINGO! Our fate “lies not in the stars,” as the Bard nailed it, “but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Methinks he got it!

Could it be, just possibly, that black-on-anyone violence derives from lack of parental responsibility? Of single parents even trying their best. From the coming of a de facto matriarchy among the black community, no black guys to instruct their sons in real manhood?

Figures say that's the case.

Forty-odd years ago, one in four blacks (23.3%) was born out of wedlock. Today, more than 70% of blacks are. Does this tell the world anything? The late and in so many respects great New York senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an underling in the Department of Labor, foretold the crisis back in the Sixties. In his famously controversial memo, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” Moynihan, himself the product of a broken home, warned that black family structures in America neared “total breakdown.” It has come to pass.

Moynihan's observations in what came to be known as the “Moynihan Report” became the target of inflexibly ideological liberals' wrath, expressed in typical vitriol we see yet today on political battlegrounds. (Spewing hatred is an excuse for thinking, probably, and far simpler.) His words, mere words expressing a take on empirical data, were soon attacked not only intellectually, but also viscerally, by misrepresentation. His theory of government misdirections to help its governed-by-consent citizens, he called the “tangle of pathology.” Government as much became the problem, as the solution. These “radical” ideas did not fit neatly into his fellow liberals' (as it turned out) pigeon holes, or boxes, their articles of long-held faith of government as savior. Not, certainly, a part of the problem.

To the Left,  his essay was fit only as a candidate for Winston Smith's Memory Hole. It was then, and to a certain degree oas now — a let's-not-talk-about-it subject. Maybe it will go away.  Moynihan for his efforts became the object of liberals' scorn, target of spear-throwers, and made out to be some sort of devil for pointing out the unpalatable. Heroes are made of this right stuff.

The brilliant Democrat, ex-shoeshine boy-turned-Harvard prof, warned us then of a correlation between out-of-wedlock births and the shortfall of governmnet programs, making people dependent, tied to programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.  He wrote: “The growth of welfare programs such as this (AFDC) can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.”  That, just for starters!

Fighting words to liberals at the time, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK, Jr. charged the Moynihan Report would “justify neglect and rationalize oppression.” In light of history, the much-vilified report and his other longer works, and speeches, became recognized as important, largely prophetic, and generally on the mark, although seeing is not believing for some, still tied to the Great Society that did not come to be. War on Poverty, remember it?

Calling a spade a spade, will cause well-meaning ideologues to go a little nutty sometimes, as the Left did then.  Moynihan was accused of blaming the victims, meaning blacks, and of being a racist. A far cry from today, when a deep fondness for him and his keen intellect has all but erased the early-held animosity. His fellow Democrats now, including his successor Hillary Rodham Clinton, mostly adore the late senator, if they do not fully espouse his views, or really understand them.

(Aside: Obama probably does understand what Moynihan was saying, and thinking, having "been there." Education was his ticket to success, however it's measured.) 

Little has changed since Moynihan's original wisdom, first expressed. Oh, there was a begrudged “R”-led stab at “welfare reform” under Clinton, little else. Mountains have not moved.  The situation is still in doubt, at issue in military terms. The genial Irishman's dismal forecast — also, that of black author James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time — came true along the way, for Watts and in Detroit.  Crime now only percolates, mostly under the surface, everpresent in all Americans do and think.  Maturity about race is still a dream, an American Dream, for some not yet at the table.  

Reducing black-on-anybody crime, putting an end to “disproportionate” incarceration for black males, starts literally at home. In one-parent black homes (usually, moms) and in single-parent homes of any race, anywhere, teaching Respect for Others, their rights to life, liberty, etc., is paramount, often lacking. Look around. Dads are important to full growth, especially of young males. Irresponsible, mostly father-less parenting, coupled with a popular culture embracing sock-it-to-'em TV and shoot-'em-up video games, rap lyrics celebrating violence, demeaning women ("ho's"), dehumanizing humanity, and a lot more, cause the senseless attacks such as those at Valleyfair and our dark streets.

Is it any wonder, with ever-expanding lawless broods (“dropping kids”), that crime lurks, menacing society? Lock-up incarceration might be, tragically, the best and the least answer for an unredeemable criminal class. One word, outrageous, fits. Will society “take it?” The answer, it seems, lies not in some government or in Obama's bum steer, “Wall Street.”

Education might bring a measure of sensibility, of sensitivity, for others' rights and freedoms, tied to Everyman's. That, it seems, is the key: Classrooms instead of cells. Educational boot camps demanding discipline, Vince Lombardi-style. Schooling without end, Amen. Education might be our nation's last best hope for safe streets and extinguishing Mr. Baldwin's fires next time. As the late comic Jack Benny once asked, in another context, what's the alternative?