The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen

Author:Tyler Cowen [Cowen, Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6.

WHY AMERICANS STOPPED RIOTING AND LEGALIZED MARIJUANA

In order to understand how peaceful America has become, we must consider what truly turbulent times looked like. Revisiting the recent past helps us see how the complacent class has shaped contemporary America and in turn has been shaped by it. The complacent class was itself originally a force of rebellion—it led an anticrime 1980s and 1990s movement against other dysfunctional features of an earlier America, such as unsafe cities and race riots. It is remarkable how far this country came toward greater calm and safety as a result. That is a lesson about the power and influence of the complacent class, but as we see later on, a historical perspective also warns us that perhaps not all of these gains will prove permanent.

With all of our fears of terrorism, the crime waves and riots of the 1960s and the early 1970s were much more destructive. During an eighteen-month period in 1971–1972, there were more than 2,500 domestic bombings reported, averaging out to more than five a day. Even though most of these did not involve fatalities, it boggles the mind to think of the number of people who dared to build or buy a bomb, plant it, and be prepared to live with the consequences of that choice. The most famous source of these bombings was the radical group the Weather Underground, but other bombers included anti–Vietnam War groups, student radicals, fighters for racial justice, and Puerto Rican independence groups, with plenty of amateur, homemade bombs circulating at the time. Yet it’s today, and not back then, when the “security theater” to protect against bombs is so intense.1

And don’t forget the riots. Starting with the 1965 Watts clashes in Los Angeles, the country faced a wave of intensely violent and often out-of-control social unrest. A police chief from the time remarked: “This situation is very much like fighting the Viet Cong … We haven’t the slightest idea when this can be brought under control.” A local CBS radio station reported: “This was not a riot. It was an insurrection against all authority … If it had gone much further it would have become a civil war.” Four thousand people ended up in jail, thirty-four people were killed (mostly by the police), hundreds were injured, and about $35 million in property (1965 dollars) was destroyed.2

Or consider the Black Panthers. The Panthers were set loose to patrol cities, armed openly with guns in the places where that was legal, with the stated aim of defending black citizens from police aggression. Police aggression surely was a problem, and remains one today, as evidenced by the wave of unrest that occurred after events in Ferguson and Baltimore. But today’s protests, at least so far, occur mostly within the law, with exceptions that are notable precisely because they are so rare. A disgruntled teenager might lunge at a cop in a moment of frustration and imprudence, a crowd might even burn down a pharmacy, but in neither case

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