Portland Goes To Hell: The Death Of An American City

Radicalism destroys everything it touches.

Thing is, I could be convinced to let cities, counties and states try out just about whatever crazy stuff they want to--so long as it's constitutional. If Seattle, Portland, NYC, California...wherever...want to implement as many insane, hard-left policies as they legally can...well...let the states (and the cities) be the laboratories of democracy. They can do it, the rest of us can see how it turns out. There's no substitute for empirical evidence...and this approach would be better than risking the entire country.

   Some problems:

   First: in actual fact we already know how such experiments will turn out. I mean, you have to be pretty clueless to think there's any real chance of non-terrible outcomes. We already know how mob rule, speech restrictions, and communism turn out. How much evidence do you think we need?

   Second: a large percentage of their flagship ideas and policies are unconstitutional. E.g., y'know, evisceration of the First Amendment--with the exception of freedom of the progressive press. But beatings for politically incorrect journalists like Andy Ngo...

   Third: it would mean subjecting the sane folk of such states and cities to illiberal lunacy.

   Fourth: people in less-insane states will also pay the price. E.g. if California opens its southern border, illegal aliens will flood into other states pretty much immediately. 

   And, on a more self-interested note: those of us in second-best Virginia are in danger of becoming one of the lunatic laboratories, now that the blue meanies are in charge...