In California County With
Highest Murder Rate, a City Confronts a Mass Killing
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/bakersfield-shooting-gunman-victims.html
A
Kern County sheriff’s deputy near one of the shooting victims on Wednesday in
Bakersfield.
By Tim Arango
·
BAKERSFIELD,
Calif. — First two people were shot dead outside a trucking company on the
southeast edge of the city. Then another was killed in front of a sporting
goods store whose shelves are stocked with guns, and where on Thursday morning
the only sign of what happened was a bullet hole in the wall and a faint drop
of blood on the sidewalk. Finally, two more people were killed at a house not
far away, before the gunman shot himself in the stomach.
Even by the grim standards of the place with the highest
murder rate in California, the shooting spree that killed five on Wednesday
night in Bakersfield, sparked by a domestic dispute, has shaken this industrial
community.
“We have a lot of homicides, up and down the Central Valley,”
the Kern County sheriff, Donny Youngblood, said.
Mr. Youngblood placed the shootings in the context
of the nation’s epidemic of mass shootings, calling it, “our new norm.”
“Now it’s our turn,” he said.
Unlike many of the recent mass shootings across the United
States that have drawn so much attention, this appeared to have started as a
domestic dispute between a husband and his recently divorced wife, according to
police officers.
The killings punctuated a deadly time for this city, which
sits in the agricultural region of California’s central valley and also counts
oil production as another important industry.
The authorities here blame
the increase in the murder rate on killings involving gangs and drugs — part of
the county is a border between two rival gang territories, said Lt. Mark King
with the sheriff’s department.
The Kern County District
Attorney, Lisa Green, said she had seen instances of domestic violence increase
in recent years, as well as gang murders. She puts much of the blame for her
county’s murder outbreak on California’s moves to reduce its prison population.
“I definitely believe the criminal justice reforms
have released dangerous criminals who should be incarcerated,” she said. Mr. King
agreed with that assessment and said that many in law enforcement did too.
Criminal justice activists dispute the connection he said.
The
region, about 115 miles north of Los Angeles, has missed out on the economic
boom of California’s coastal areas. Even
as the area’s farms feed the rest of the state, and the oil wells account for
about 70 percent of
California’s production, it is economically depressed: the county’s unemployment rate is
over 8 percent, almost twice that of the state, and residents say gangs and
drug use are rampant.
The
killings on Wednesday began in a desolate section of southeast Bakersfield, an
important city on trucking routes through the Central Valley, whose businesses
cater to those passing through: auto body shops, truck stops, fast-food
restaurants, self-storage.
The
sheriff’s department identified the gunman as Javier Casarez, 54. The
authorities said Mr. Casarez drove his wife to a trucking business near Highway
58, where he confronted another man, quickly killing him and then his wife.
Emily
Meza, who owns an auto body shop next to the trucking company, was in her
office when the shootings began. “I was in here with a customer and one of the
workers ran in and said, ‘Lock the doors,’” she said.
Just as
the shooting started, car alarms in the parking lot began wailing. “Then he did
a U-turn and left,” she said. “He drove off.”
She was back at work Thursday morning, almost as
if nothing happened. “You know, it’s just the adrenaline of the moment,” she
said.
A third man was killed near the trucking company, and then Mr.
Casarez, the authorities say, drove to a nearby home and killed two more
people, a 31-year-old woman named Laura Garcia, and her father Eliseo Cazares,
57.
Mr. Casarez turned his gun on himself in the parking lot of an
auto body shop, as a sheriff’s deputy ordered him to “put the gun down!,”
according to body camera footage that the sheriff’s department made public. It all lasted about a half-hour, and when
it was over six bodies, including Mr. Casarez’s, lay at multiple crime scenes.
“These cases are without a doubt overwhelming,” Mr. Youngblood
said. “Multiple crime scenes. We had all hands on deck last night.”
He said the gunman used a .50-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun
— which he described as, “one of the largest handguns that are made.” Mr.
Youngblood said they have not determined whether Mr. Casarez owned the gun
legally.
Mr. Youngblood said investigators were still trying to piece
together the relationships between the victims and the gunman, and said the
final explanation may go beyond domestic violence.
“We don’t know that yet,” he said.
Last year, Kern
County set a record with 101 murders, according to a tally kept by KGET, a local television station,
even as murders dropped across California. And
according to statistics released by the state Attorney General,
Kern County last year had the highest per-capita murder rate in the state, with
almost 10 murders per 100,000 people.
Jose Sanchez, who
lives next door to one of the murder scenes, said he knew his neighbors well,
and was shocked. Mr. Sanchez, 43, an immigrant from Mexico who once worked the
farm fields but now owns three trucks, said he has taken notice of the rise in
murders here, but always felt a distance from them.
“There’s murders, but in my opinion they are mostly gangs and
drugs,” he said.
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON
Adios, Sanctuary
La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
BLOG: MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S
EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE
THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN
AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE
EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER
A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW
MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN CA AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF
THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS
ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE ENTERPRISE HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR
LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.
Liberals claim they more than make that up
with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true. It’s not even close. FAIR
estimates illegal aliens in California contribute only $1.21 billion in tax
revenue, which means they cost California $20.6 billion, or at least $1,800 per
household.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist
"Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt
that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union
power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant
Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political
party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next
and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the
states within Aztlan."
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
If
Immigration Creates Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?
California used
to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle
class. Today, it is America's poverty
capital. What went wrong? In a word:
immigration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau'...: The Golden
State is peddling fool's gold lately.
California used to be home to America's largest and most
affluent middle class. Today, it is America's poverty capital. What
went wrong? In a word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers
around 15 percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau
measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account
for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing,
and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for example. Accounting
for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of
12.7 percent.
Likewise, income inequality in California is the second-highest in America, behind only New York. In fact, if California were an
independent country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth,
nestled comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is
slightly more egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the
"social democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most
unequal nation, while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176
countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in
common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations, and a lavish welfare state – these are
the standard explanations for California's poverty epidemic. They
have some merit. For example, California has both the highest
personal income tax rate and the highest sales tax in America, according
to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high, but successive
"progressive" governments have swamped the state in a sea of red
tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and retard
economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific Research
Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government regulation
hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide
emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. By some
estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national
average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics ... found that
"in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ... energy
expenditures exceeding 10% of household income."
Some government regulation is necessary and desirable, but most of
California's is not. There is virtue in governing with a "light
touch."
Finally, California's welfare state is, perhaps paradoxically, a source
of poverty in the state. The Orange Country Register reports that California's
social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother with two children under the age of 5
who participates in these major welfare programs – Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps),
housing assistance, home energy assistance, Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants and Children – would receive a benefits package
worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits in Europe ranged from $38,588 per
year in Denmark to just $1,112 in Romania. The California benefits
package is higher than in well-known welfare states as France ($17,324),
Germany ($23,257) and even Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help
the poor, reality is messy. There are three main problems with the
welfare state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government
handouts that are often far more valuable than a job. This can be
ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients,
but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed. Second,
welfare states are expensive. This means
higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities
for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets for the poor. Whether
through domestic migration or foreign immigration, poor people flock to places
with generous welfare states. This is logical from the immigrant's
perspective, but it makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This
fact is why socialism and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.
Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population
exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people. The growth
was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states,
but the majority came from abroad. The Public Policy
Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants
currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the
state's population.
This figure includes 2.4 million illegal aliens, although
a recent study from Yale University suggests that the true number of aliens is at least
double that. Modifying the initial
figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is
an immigrant. This is not to disparage California's
immigrant population, but it is madness to deny that such a large influx of
people has changed California's society and economy.
Importantly, immigrants vote
Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center
for Immigration Studies. In California, immigration has
increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people,
compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican
voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories,
but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This
means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many
conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a
Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because
millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California
blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty
level.
REALITIES OF A STATE IN
MELTDOWN:
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
In 1973, as I was going through customs in
New York, the customs agent rifling my bag looked at my passport and said, with
a Bronx sneer, “Bruce Thornton, huh. Must be one of them Hollywood names.”
Hearing that astonishing statement, I
realized for the first time that California is as much an idea as a place.
There were few regions in America more distant from Hollywood than the rural,
mostly poor, multiethnic San Joaquin Valley where my family lived and ranched.
Yet to this New Yorker, the Valley was invisible.
BLOG: FEINSTEIN & BOXER THREE TIMES
ATTEMPTED TO INSERT IN VARIOUS BILLS AN AMNESTY FOR FARM WORKERS TO REPAY THEIR
BIG AG BIG DONORS.
ONE-THIRD OF ALL FARM WORKERS END UP ON
WELFARE AS SOON AS THE ANCHOR BABIES START COMING
Coastal Californians are sometimes just as
blind to the world on the other side of the Coast Range, even though its farms,
orchards, vineyards, dairies, and ranches comprise more than half the
state’s $46
billion agriculture industry, which grows over 400 commodities, including over a third of the
country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts.
Granted, Silicon Valley is an economic
colossus compared to the ag industry, but agriculture’s importance can’t be
measured just in dollars and cents. Tech, movies, and every other industry
tends to forget that their lives and businesses, indeed civilization itself,
all rest on the shoulders of those who produce the food. You can live without
your iPhone or your Mac or the latest Marvel Studios blockbuster. But you can’t live without the food grown by the one out of a
100 people who work to feed the other 99.
A Politically Invisible Valley
Living in the most conservative counties
in the
deepest-blue state, Valley residents
constantly see
their concerns, beliefs, and needs
seldom taken
into account at the state or federal
level.
Registered Democrats in California
outnumber registered Republicans by over 19%, and the State Legislature seats about twice as many Democrats as
Republicans (California’s one of only eight states nationwide with a trifecta of a Democratic and two Democratic
controlled legislative bodies).
California’s Congressional delegation is
even more unbalanced: in the House of Representatives, currently there are
fourteen Republicans compared to thirty-nine House Democrats (at least half of
those GOP districts are in danger of turning blue this fall); half the Republicans represent Central Valley districts, none
bordering the Pacific Ocean. The last elected Republican US Senator left office
in 1991. The last Republican governor was the politically light-pink
action-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose second term ended in 2011.
This progressive dominance of the state
has led to policies and priorities that has damaged its agricultural economy
and seriously degraded the quality of life in the Valley.
Despite a long drought that has diminished
the run-off of snow from the Sierra Nevada, projects for dams and reservoirs
are on hold, seriously impacting the ag industry that relies on the snowmelt
for most of its water. Worse yet, since 2008, a period including the height of
the drought, 1.4 trillion gallons of water have been dumped into the Pacific
Ocean to protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a two-inch bait-fish. Thousands of agricultural jobs have been
lost and farmland left uncultivated, all to satisfy the sensibilities of
affluent urban environmentalists. And even after a few years of abundant rain,
Valley farmers this year are receiving just 20% of their South-of-the-Delta water allocation.
Or take California’s high-speed rail
project, currently moribund and $10 billion over budget just for construction of the easiest section, through the
flat center of the Valley. Meanwhile, State Highway 99, which bisects the
Valley from north to south for 500 miles, is pot-holed, inefficient, and crammed
with 18-wheel semis. It is the bloodiest highway in the country, in dire need
of widening and repair. Yet to gratify our
Democratic governor’s
high-tech green obsession, billions of
dollars are
being squandered to create an
unnecessary link
between the Bay Area and Los
Angeles. That’s $10 billion that could have been
spent building more reservoirs instead of dumping water into the ocean because
there’s no place to store it.
The common thread of these two examples
of
mismanagement and waste is the romantic
environmentalism of the well-heeled
coastal left.
They serially support government
projects and
regulations that impact the poor and the
aged, who
are left to bear their costs.
The same idealized nature-love has led to
regulations and taxes on energy that have made California home of the
third-worst energy poverty in the country. In sweltering San Joaquin Valley
counties like Madera and Tulare, energy poverty rates are 15% compared to 3–4% in cool, deep-blue coastal enclaves.
Impoverished Kings County averages over $500 a month in electric bills, while
tony Marin Country, with an average income twice that of Kings County, averages
$200. Again, it’s the poor, aged, and working class who bear the brunt of these
costs, especially in the Valley where temperatures regularly reach triple
digits in the summer; unlike the coast, where the clement climate makes
expensive air-conditioning unnecessary.
Deteriorating Quality of Life
It’s no wonder then that Fresno, in the
heart of the
Valley, is the second most impoverished
city in the
poorest region of a state that has the
highest
poverty levels in the country and one of
the
highest rates of income inequality. Over
one-fifth
of its residents live below the poverty
line, and it
The greatest impact on the Valley’s
deteriorating quality of life, however,
has been
the influx of illegal aliens. Some are attracted by
plentiful agriculture and construction
work, and
others by California’s generous welfare
transfers
— California is home to one in three of
the
country’s welfare recipients— all facilitated
by
California’s status as a “sanctuary
state” that
regularly releases felons rather than
cooperate
with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement
(ICE). As a result, one-quarter of the
country’s
from underdeveloped regions of Mexico
and Latin
America that have different social and
cultural
mores and attitudes to the law and
civic
responsibility.
The consequences of these feckless
policies are
found throughout the state. But they
are
especially noticeable in rural California.
There
high levels of crime and daily
disorder—from
murders, assaults, and drug trafficking,
to
driving without insurance, DUIs,
hit-and-runs,
and ignoring building and sanitation
codes—
have degraded or, in some cases, destroyed
the
once-orderly farming towns that used to
be
populated by earlier immigrants,
including
many legal immigrants from Mexico, who
over
a few generations of sometimes rocky
coexistence assimilated to American
culture
and society.
Marginalized Cultural Minorities
More broadly, the dominant cultures and
mores of the dot.com north and the Hollywood south are inimical to those of the
Valley. Whether it is gun-ownership, hunting, church-going, or military
service, many people in the San Joaquin Valley of all races are quickly
becoming cultural minorities marginalized by the increasingly radical positions
on issues such as abortion, guns, and religion.
Despite the liberal assumption that all
Hispanics favor progressive policies, many Latino immigrants and their children
find more in common with Valley farmers and natives with whom they live and
work than they do with distant urban elites.
Indeed, as a vocal conservative professor
in the local university (Fresno State), I have survived mainly because my
students, now more than half Latino and Mexican immigrants or children of
immigrants, are traditional and practical in a way that makes them impatient
with the patronizing victim-politics of more affluent professors. They have
more experience with physical labor, they are more religious and, like me, they
are often the first in their families to graduate from college. As I did with
the rural Mexican Americans I grew up with, I usually have more in common with
my students than I do with many of my colleagues.
And this is the great irony of the
invisibility of the “other” California: the blue-coast policies that suit the
prejudices and sensibilities of the affluent have damaged the prospects of the
“others of color” they claim they want to help. Over-
represented on the poverty and welfare
rolls, many
migrants both legal and illegal have seen
water
policies that destroy agricultural jobs,
building
restrictions that drive up the cost of
housing,
energy policies that increase their cost
of living, “sanctuary city” policies that put back on the
streets thugs and criminals who prey
mainly on
their ethnic fellows, and economic
policies that
favor the redistribution rather than the
creation of wealth and jobs.
Meanwhile, the coastal liberals who tout a
cosmetic diversity live in a de facto apartheid world, surrounded by those of
similar income, taste, and politics. Many look down on the people whom they
view as racists and xenophobes at worst, and intellectually challenged rubes at
best. This disdain has been evident in the way the media regularly sneer that
House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is a “former dairy-farmer” from
Tulare County, an origin that makes “the match between his backstory and his
prominence” seem “wholly incongruous,” per Roll Call's David Hawkings.
Finally, those of us who grew up and live
in the rural Valley did so among a genuine diversity, one that reflected the
more complex identities beyond the crude categories of “white” or “black” or
“Hispanic.”
Italians, Basques, Portuguese, Armenians,
Swedes, Mexicans, Filipinos, Southern blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Volga Germans,
Scotch-Irish Dust Bowl migrants—all migrated to the Valley to work the fields
and better their lives. Their children and grandchildren went to the same
schools, danced together and drank together, helped round up each other’s
animals when they got loose, were best friends or deadly enemies, dated and
intermarried, got drafted into the Army or joined the Marines—all of them
Americans who managed to honor their diverse heritages and faiths, but still be
a community. Their most important distinctions were not so much between races
and ethnicities, though those of course often collided, but between the
respectable people––those who obeyed the law, went to church, and raised their
kids right–– and those we all called “no damned good.” Skin-color or accents
couldn’t sort one from the other.
What most of us learned from living in
real diversity in the Valley is that being an American means taking people one
at a time.
That world still exists, but it is slowly
fading away—in part because of the policies and politics of those to our west,
who can see nothing on the other side of the Coast Range.
ABOUT BRUCE THORNTON
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism
Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State
University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical
culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.
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