FROM THE ARCHIVES
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Private vs. public
[Rod Dreher 03/13 06:14 PM]Graeme writes to make a very important point:
To take one point out of your sprawl emailer's discussion, I wanted to highlight why everyone is so eager to commercialise public space: it is the only way of preserving any sort of standards in public space. To ensure that beggars, loons, the obscene, etc do not befoul the common space, it must be a private space (and even then there are restrictions based on public accommodation laws).
Where once the community could express itself through the municipal government and the local police, now this must be devolved to merchants, as they are the only ones with the power to act. A business can erect a Christmas display, where many governments can not, or at least not without a protracted legal battle. Merchants can mandate civilised behaviour, while a town has no control over behaviour in the square except against that which is criminal (and can withstand constitutional scrutiny and much litigation from the Anti-American Civil Liberties Union).
Do not blame the capitalists, for they are acting to protect traditional values. Blame instead the New Deal and all Progressives for the evil that they have consciously wrought.
I take his point, though I think it is a limited one (the capitalism of the housing developers is not working to protect traditional values, for example, but that’s another story). Still, let’s dwell on Graeme’s insight for a sec. About 12 years ago, I visited Universal Studios’ City Walk out in L.A.; it was brand-new then, and much commented on. It’s a fake street of outdoor cafes, bookstores, restaurants, stuff for kids to do, etc. But it was all on private property, so the company could throw out any ne’er-do-wells. Of course the left at the time got all huffy about it, and while I thought it was pathetic that it had come to this, I would rather see places like City Walk exist than not. Where else can families go not to be assaulted by aggressively anti-social people, not limited to deranged panhandlers? The left and their allies in the courts have left society defenseless in the face of people who are determined to destroy the public square.
But the problem goes deeper than that. It calls to mind once again Alasdair Macintyre’s observation that a community of virtue is almost impossible nowadays because we have no basis to agree on anything, particularly not on generally observed standards of public behavior. It’s impossible to have a cop on every corner, so if society isn’t willing to police itself, public life becomes harder and harder to endure. Here in north Texas, several megachurches have come up with versions of University City Walk on their campuses – playgrounds for the kids, food courts, coffee shops, bookstores, etc. Moms who don’t necessarily go to that church bring their children to these places to play. These moms know that they can count on ORDER being enforced there. I see these things as a defeat for society. But I’m glad they are there. They are examples of the “new forms of moral community” Macintyre said we had to start building. Graeme is right: if you don’t like these things, and want to find someone to blame for them, blame the people who don’t know how to act respectably and neighborly in public, and the forces on the left who empower them at the expense of the wider community.
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