Is-Ought on the Streets
The Cancel Klan is going after Tucker Carlson. Again.
His thought crime? This:
“We do know why it happened, though. Kenosha devolved into anarchy because the authorities abandoned the people,” Carlson said. “Those in charge, from the governor on down, refused to enforce the law. They’ve stood back and watched Kenosha burn. Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?”
For which he was accused with advocating vigilantism.
Rather than judging him on the basis of one part of a 7+ minute monologue, watch the entire thing:
The criticism of Carlson is a classic example of the is-ought fallacy. Carlson was, in essence, saying what is–explaining the reason for what is–by solving for the equilibrium. It’s not rocket science. It’s not game theory that requires elaborate equilibrium concepts or refinements.
It’s very basic: when authorities fail to keep peace and order, people will act in what they perceive to be self-defense. When the civil law breaks down, the law of the jungle–the state of nature, under some theories–takes over.
What’s amazing is that this sun-rises-in-the-east insight is considered an incitement. In fact, it is a lament. It is clear that Carlson is hardly happy at the prospect. Nor am I. He is not advocating it. Nor am I. He is saying, merely: you reap what you sow.
Is that so complicated?
And America’s cities are sowing a grim harvest of violence and despair as the result of two very bizarre and seemingly incompatible failures of the governing classes: the complete abdication of law and order in many major cities, combined with the draconian exercise of government power allegedly intended to achieve the (entirely futile) goal of eradicating covid-19.
That is, the governing classes in myriad states and cities have completely inverted the proper roles of government. They fail to exercise power and authority to perform their proper functions, but exercise the full power of the state to perform functions which are not just improper, but counterproductive. They kneel before the lawless, and crush the law-abiding under their heels.
The signs are everywhere. Look at Portland, which has been devastated by riots for nigh on to three months. Every night. (NB: protests happen during the day; riots happen at night.) The response of Oregon authorities–to shriek at the attempts of the Federal government to protect Federal property, and a complete unwillingness to get the riots under control. The mayor–with a sickly ironic choice of words–says that the riots will “burn out” eventually.
Yeah, Nero of the Columbia (ironic!): they will burn out figuratively because the city you allegedly govern will be burned out. Literally.
Or consider my hometown, Chicago, which has seen spasms of bacchanalia of violence over the past months. The looting has devastated the Magnificent Mile shopping district.
In a richly symbolic act, on several occasions the city raised the bridges over the Chicago River to prevent marauding looters from the South Side easy access to the ritzy north side of the river. Like a besieged medieval town raising the drawbridges over the moat in an attempt to stymie invading barbarians:

The devastation of riots and looting is tag teaming with the devastation wrought by the insane lockdown policies of local governments who compensate for their surrender of the streets by oppressing you, and the myriad restaurants, sellers of personal services (e.g., hair care), and small retailers that you patronize.
It was recently reported that 50 percent of the businesses in San Francisco have closed. Most will probably never reopen. If you live in the various Lockdown Lands–e.g., California, NY–you see boarded up store after boarded up store. 5th Avenue has become a shuttered ghost town. So have many other places.
Homelessness has exploded in many places–again, largely as a result of the abdication of civil authorities. San Francisco and Austin are two prominent examples.
It is so hard to build, so easy to destroy. I first went to NYC in the late-1970s, and traveled there a lot on business in the mid-1980s. It was a dangerous, dirty, dystopian place. In the late-1980s, the rejuvenation began. Notably, the first and crucial step of the process was restoration of public order, a process that hapless administration after hapless administration (crowned by the king of haplessness, David Dinkins) claimed was impossible. But the Giuliani administration started a virtuous cycle that made the city an attractive place to live (for people who like that kind of living) and a major destination for tourists.
And those three decades of progress have been erased, in a little over three months, due to a failure to keep order (e.g., the release of thousands of criminals back on the streets) and the imposition of a crushing order on the law abiding, especially law abiding small businesses. Crime has skyrocketed, and people–productive people–are leaving, almost certainly never to come back.
These are the wages of the most colossal government failure in American history. Failure from coast-to-coast; failure in the large cities on the coasts in particular.
You can cancel Carlson for pointing out the obvious, but you can’t cancel the obvious: when the duly constituted institutions of collective action fail to protect the lives, liberty, and property of large numbers of people, large numbers of people will take individual action, or emergent, unsanctioned, spontaneous collective action, to do what governments have failed to do.
In short, governments ought to protect lives, liberty, and property. When they do not, people will do so themselves. And that’s just the way it is.