About those Confederate statues,
which I write about in my new column: Tyler Cowen, a critic of some influence
these days, praised Baltimore’s mayor who decided to remove that city’s
confederate statutes in the dead of night without warning. Wrote Cowen:
his
statue removal was done suddenly, without democratic input for the final
decision to proceed, and, as far as I can tell, without much in the way of
leaks. The mayor just did it. Physically. Overnight. The importance of physical
space, and how we shape and present it, must have been paramount in her mind.
I suspect that what was paramount in her mind
was avoiding the kind of trouble they had in Charlottesville. But while
prudent, was the mayor’s move wise? I remember well how Richie Daley destroyed
Midway Airport in 2003 suddenly, physically, overnight, without democratic
input for the final decision to proceed. Cowen concludes, “That is what the end
of complacency looks like.” Yes, but that also is what the beginning of
something worse looks like.
This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2017.
