Winston Churchill said: “A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.” Irving Kristol, an early neocon, said: “A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.”
Both quips sprang to mind when I read the San Francisco Chronicle’s front-page story this morning headlined “Generational divide on Oakland policing.” The story purports to describe “how pro- and anti-police feelings often split along generational lines.” The reporter, Sarah Ravani, who covers the East Bay more or less fairly, quotes a young 18-year old Oakland woman as saying “Having so many different types of police makes me feel unsafe.” It then quotes her father: “If I was a criminal, I’d love it here [in Oakland], because I can get away with anything.”
Look: We love our youth, don’t we? The repository of idealism—the fount of change—the hope for the future--“the trustees of posterity,” in Disraeli’s words.
But is it permissible to say this: Young people can be, and often are, idiots.
Now, before anyone decides I’m just a grumpy old man, jealous of the vigor of youth, let me assure everyone that I, too, was young and idealistic. I marched against the Vietnam War, including once with Dr. King. I believed that All You Need is Love. I was a Flaming Liberal. I still believed these things into my middle age. And then I moved to Oakland.
What happens to reasonable people as they age? They acquire experience. And it is only from experience that true knowledge can be wrested. Young people, lacking experience, depend instead on instinct to reach conclusions. But instinct can be misleading. A young instinct might conclude that all people, having god-given souls, are good, and that anyone who behaves badly must therefore have been driven to it by a repressive society. The young person thus dedicates her young life to eliminating this repression. Only when all people, of all races, ethnicities and backgrounds, are free, will bad behavior (which is unnatural) be driven from the stage.
As people age, they learn that this particular theory is nonsense. All people may indeed have souls, but that doesn’t prevent some from being predators. And predators are notoriously immune to respecting acts of lovingkindness from their victims. This is what Kristol meant: You can have all the starry-eyed dreams you want, but that won’t stop some thug from smashing you in the face with his fist and stealing all your stuff. At that point, you have to reconsider things, and this brings us back to the young 18-year old Oakland woman and her father. The girl thinks with her heart; the older man thinks with his head.
We need both heart and head, I suppose. It’s a matter of balance. I don’t fault Libby Schaaf’s heart (as I’ve written on previous occasions). Nor do I fault Carroll Fife’s heart (although it annoys me to have to admit it!). But I do fault their heads. Both remain fixated with the immature fantasies of the 18-year old woman, the unrealistic idealism that, yes, allows criminals in Oakland “to get away with anything.”
“Youth is a blunder,” Disreali also observed, the “blunder” being the very impetuosity, devoid of reason and common sense, with which so many young people advance their idealistic theories. They voted in droves for Carroll Fife in District 3 because she tossed them meaningless clichés that appealed to the hearts of the many Millennials and Gen X’ers who live here. Those of us who said, “Wait a minute, use your head” were entirely disregarded. We’re seeing now the fruits of voting with an uninformed heart rather than with an educated head. If you like the camps and criminality, and feel unsafe in the presence of cops, then keep on electing more Fifes. You’ll have more camps and criminality, and fewer cops, and an Oakland where getting away with anything is the new normal.
Steve Heimoff