Grand Rapids’ leading print journalist responds to the massacre

In the entry on Rodrick Shonte Dantzler who murdered seven people in Grand Rapids yesterday, I wrote:

Liberals and mainstream conservatives will no doubt see the incident as a wake-up call that we must try strive harder than ever to make No Child Left Behind work, so that the racial gap can be closed, and blacks won’t be left behind and become angry and alienated and turn to violence.

While I meant it mockingly, my underlying point was serious: the response of liberals to the disasters caused by liberalism is always: to call for more liberalism.

Then, in immediate confirmation of my prediction, a reader sent me a note, “That didn’t take long at all,” along with a column by Grand Rapids News editor Paul Keep, entitled:

After Rodrick Dantzler’s rampage, how can we afford not to have a strong social safety net?

Though I had predicted something like this, the mind buckles. In reality, what Dantzler—who had previously served time for serious crimes, who was described by acquaintances as “crazy” and “dangerous,” and who was not taking his medications—needed was to be in a state hospital with bars. But undoing the liberal catastrophe of de-institutionalization or extending jail time for violent offenders is not what Keep means by a strong social safety net. He just wants more services and more truckling to the sensitivities of violent blacks.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 08, 2011 01:16 PM | Send