Deploying the National Guard - The Rabbi's View

Washington D.C. mayor, Murial Bowser (Politico)

I have to admit that the possible sight of uniformed military personnel on the street corners of my neighborhood in Chicago is a bit disconcerting for me to contemplate. It is an intimidating look. And yet, I support it.

When the president announced that Chicago was the target of his next deployment of the National Guard, it was that ‘look’ that Governor J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson had in mind when they  held an impromptu news conference condemning the president’s decision. The governor called it a military occupation. A sentiment angrily echoed by the mayor.

The president’s stated purpose for doing this was to substantially curb the high crime and murder rate in the city, just as he had done with the Guard in Washington, D.C.

Pritzker and Johnson laughed off that claim, citing statistics that Chicago had seen a 30% reduction in crime and murder this year compared to last. They said that Chicago didn’t need or want his help.

I found that argument laughable in itself. What they were in essence saying is that crime and murders are now at an ‘acceptable’ level. As if the attempt to stop the  multiple drive-by shootings that took place the prior weekend were nothing more than a political stunt by a megalomaniacal president who wants to be king.

So what is the reality? Does Chicago really need help reducing crime, or doesn’t it? And is the National Guard the way to do it?

The question is moot. For now. The president has decided to focus on Memphis, which has the highest crime rate in the nation. But he has promised that Chicago is still on his list. So the question  persists.

For an answer, it might be instructive to look at what Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, a liberal Democrat, said about the federal surge there. She credited the president’s deployment of the national guard with lowering crime in her city. As reported by NBC, Bowser said:

"We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city," Bowser told reporters about the expansion of federal law enforcement and its partnership with the Metropolitan Police Department.

Carjackings, she said, were the "most troubling" crime plaguing D.C. in 2023, and they have decreased in recent years. Bowser noted that in the 20 days since the federal takeover, there had been an 87% drop in carjackings compared with the same period last year. The data also showed a 15% fall in overall crime during that same period.

"We know that when carjackings go down, when use of guns goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer, so this surge has been important to us," Bowser added.

That is quite the admission from a liberal Democrat who was originally vehemently opposed to the surge. Even though now (in a bow to her critics on the left) she still criticizes the deployment -  it is hard to see the outcome as anything but positive - given the results.

Hopefully Memphis will see similar results. As expected, Democratic leaders there are vehemently opposed, citing the same ‘occupation’ trope Illinois Democrats used. But one has to wonder how the people most affected by crime feel about it.

While there have been protests from supporters of those Democratic leaders, if one were to ask actual victims of crime in Memphis whether they think extra protection is a good idea, I believe they would overwhelmingly support it. And those are the people who SHOULD be consulted. Not politicians with a political agenda.

With antisemitism surging in many areas of the country, it is no surprise that rabbis in Memphis support help to law enforcement through a surge in National Guard presence. One of them is an Orthodox rabbi as noted at JNS:

Rabbi Akiva Males of Young Israel of Memphis, an Orthodox congregation, told JNS that “many members of our community—not just the Jewish community, but the entire Memphis area—have been quite concerned about crime in our city. We all would love to see as much law and order as possible. I don’t think anyone who’s not a criminal has anything to be nervous about, and I think that anything that can be done to help the scourge of violence and criminality that seems to have taken a foothold in Memphis, we can welcome that.”

He added that having the National Guard in Memphis would increase ‘feelings of security among many of his congregants’. But Rabbi Males also stressed that the root problem of violence needs to be addressed if there is to be a real solution. Which is ‘the breakdown of family structure in many cities across the country,’

I think he is absolutely right. This is a phenomenon I attribute to the shift away from traditional values that guided American families well into the 20th century. Values that have been replaced by values of ‘me-ism’. Family values  have been replaced by the pursuit of personal goals. The tradtional roles of mother and father have been changed. Freedom has replaced responsibility. Self-gratification has placed altruism on the back burner. 

Divorce is way up which all too often results in a dysfunctional childhood for children. Traditional families consisting of a mother and father are decreasing while single parenthood is increasing.  Adding to this phenomenon are single sex couples raising children they have either adopted or have had through surrogacy. I’m sorry but having two fathers is not the same as having a father and a mother. Marriage - once the bedrock of American family life is increasingly disappearing as a defining characteristic of American family life. When traditional values morph into a me-ism philosophy it isn’t a long stretch to go from there to the instant gratification one gets through drugs and eventually crime.

Back to Chicago. Mayor Johnson has done his best to undermine law enforcement. Before becoming a mayoral candidate, he was an outspoken proponent of defunding the police. Even though he later claimed to have abandoned that position, the reality is that he still embraces it. He has effectively ‘defunded’ the Chicago Police Department by reducing their portion of the city budget. He diverted that money to what he considers the root cause of crime: lack of jobs for young people. He wants to ‘invest in youth’ with funds taken from the police. (Funding his pet projects will result next year in the largest budget deficit in Chicago’s history- nearly a billion dollars!)

He reasons that if there were more jobs for Chicago’s youth, there would be fewer drive-by shootings. What is missing in his calculus is the moral teaching that murder is one of the worst evils known to man. A moral value unlearned due to the increased breakdown of the family.

And what about protecting the public? Johnson’s answer: people can hire their own security when they need it.

If Chicago does not have enough police to enforce the law, then law enforcement needs to be supplemented by other means. And if the most expedient way is with the National Guard, which has already shown results, then refusing to deploy them is itself criminal.

 If even one life can be saved because a drive-by shooter fears being caught by an onlooking soldier in uniform, it will have been worth it. If what happened in D.C. doesn’t prove that, nothing will.

And yet, it is clear to me that the only people opposed to this most expedient way of reducing crime in major cities are liberal Democrats. That tells you all you need to know about their motives. Which have little to do with reducing crime and everything to do with politics.