“At what point does law and order break down,” I ask Adam Baldwin, “and people just feel that they have no choice but to take matters into their own hands?” The recent death of a dangerous man in a subway confrontation has raised this question to a new level. Adam’s been there before, literally, having lived in New York City in the early 1980s. “The police were being undermined” by politicians, and “Curtis Sliwa and his Guardian Angels were walking the streets … trying to contain crime.” And it’s happening all over again as progressive politicians and prosecutors demolish the social compact and deliberately ignore the first role of government — to keep order in order to prevent vigilantism rather than the rule of law.
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Welcome back to our VIP video series “The Amiable Skeptics,” featuring my friend Adam Baldwin! Adam is well-known for his long and storied Hollywood career, starting with My Bodyguard, and especially for his roles in Full Metal Jacket, Firefly, its film sequel Serenity, Chuck, and The Last Ship.
The erosion of the social compact not only looks familiar to anyone who lived through the 1970s and 1980s, it looks as though it’s accelerated this time around. It took a generation of better policing and firm disincentives to make American cities safer, but it has only taken us three years to get back to street justice. “The social contract is,” I say, that “I will forego my right to personal vengeance and assign it to the State, in trade for the State taking responsibility for order in the streets.” Without that, I continue, you end up with “vendettas in the public square,” and the emergence of quasi-militias like the Guardian Angels to impose order where government has abandoned that social compact.
Even though they presumably have the most at risk, Adam argues that the elites “don’t mind” the social disintegration. “It’s part and parcel of the Marxist project to transition from a republic,” he says. “Anarchy is the transitional phase from a republic to an oligarchy of the elites.” For everyone else, especially those “stuck” in these urban centers who lack the resources to flee, “the natural instinct of self-defense kicks in … then it becomes tribal.”
“The social compact, the first order of government, is to govern the streets and keep the peace and keep order so that people can go about their lives without an inordinate risk of falling victim to crime and violence,” I declare. I may not be immune from crime living fairly distant from large urban centers (and in Texas), “but I’m not immersed in situations where not only is crime rampant, but the local government isn’t doing anything about it because they’re more interested in virtue signaling than they are in the social compact.” As that compact degrades by deliberate dereliction of duty, “people will take their own steps to ensure the safety of themselves and their tribe. And that’s really going to be a problem,” I argue.
Our discussion goes through several different related points on this topic, especially in relation to the CHAZ/CHOP insurrections in major American cities and how that relates to this retreat by government from governance. Be sure to watch it all, and join us in the comments.
