“Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their safety seems to be the first.”
So wrote Publius, or John Jay, in Federalist 3. He made this point in appealing to those debating whether to ratify the Constitution that the new document would aid in the safety of the public from foreign and domestic threats. In making this point, the founders knew well the basic societal need that government fulfilled. Human beings possessed the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from God. They were endowed with these rights, as the Declaration of Independence stated, in God’s act of creating us.
Yet human nature being selfish and prone to violence, these rights lack security. Left to ourselves, we fear the unwanted advances of others that can turn into life-altering threats. We form government as a means of securing our rights from those who wish us ill. In other words, government’s first job is to make us safe in our persons and our property.
As basic as that truth is, the Left seems to have forgotten it. Witness where it holds the most unquestioned authority: big cities. In many of them, we find high crime rates and police without adequate manpower to change that fact. People and businesses are fleeing once highly sought places such as San Francisco, unable to stand the conditions left-wing governance has created.
Yet things have started to change. Democrats in big cities have begun ramping up law enforcement and thereby cracking down on crime. New York’s governor deployed the National Guard in New York City’s subway system. Oregon now has recriminalized possession of hard drugs. Even San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have approved measures to stem their persistent crime problems.
These moves mark a significant shift from the progressive-left commitments of 2020 to “defund the police” and decriminalize certain infractions. These policies were utterly divorced from reality, and it took no time for the pernicious results to make parts of many cities frightening places to live and to work.
Crime has come down some anyway since the pandemic. The conditions accompanying lockdowns gave a special boost to lawlessness as people became disconnected from work and neighborhood in deeply unsettling ways. But more policy reform is needed to achieve the safety the people in their jurisdictions demand and deserve, as these Democrats have come to realize. And this turn toward greater toughness on crime seems only likely to spread to more cities as the people clamor for more and better policing as well as harsher and more evenly distributed punishment.
In watching these changes unfold, we should see that the need for safety does not exhaust the good government can and should do. But safety forms the ground upon which the government then can pursue other goals.
At its most primal, the logic is simple. To pursue the good life, one must be alive. The latter is a necessary prerequisite for the former. This point plays out in relation to almost anything government does, including priorities near and dear to the progressive Left.
Many on the Left, for instance, rightly value education. But how well can teachers teach or children learn when they spend their time and energy worried about the walk to school or cannot sleep peacefully at night in their homes?
Many on the Left desire that people receive affordable housing and adequate healthcare. But both are part of the broader need for safety. And both can only be sustainably provided if government has local crime under control.
Some of this crackdown on crime might merely be worry about the 2024 general election. Republicans criticized Democrats to a strong down-ballot effect in 2020 as the problems of progressive-left policies manifested across the country. But enough sustained electoral pressure still can make a long-term difference.
Let us hope Democrats wake up to the need for better crime policies not only to keep their elected offices. Let us hope they see, as did the Federalist Papers, the basic duty of government to protect its citizens.
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Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.
