Disorder is the enemy of liberty

When the Trump Administration decided to federalize, at least for 30 days, the police force in Washington, D.C., the political left declared a crisis for our democracy. And yet, it is unquestionably true that the president of the United States has the authority to do exactly what President Trump has now done. Direct federal supervision of local law enforcement is temporary and date-stamped by law, and it can be traced directly to a federal act that goes back to 1973, having to do with home rule for the District of Columbia.

Is this likely to be a turning point in American history? No, probably not. But it does point to an urgently important issue. That issue is less about politics (though it is political) than about what it takes to sustain a functioning society. At the most basic level, we need to understand that the first responsibility of any government is to maintain peace and order. A functional order is more fundamental than the exercise of political rights. As America’s founders understood, those rights must be protected and respected by government, and they can only be exercised if a basic level of order is in place. To be specific, you can’t have legitimate elections without order on the streets and order in the election itself.

Liberty requires order, and right order protects liberty. A government that is not competent at the task of sustaining order is a government that is failing. It is hardly a secret that sustaining order has been a challenge for local government in our nation’s capital, and that’s a national embarrassment.

The principle that order precedes liberty is deeply biblical. The exercise of liberty can only take place in a context of regulated and respected order. As a matter of fact, the Bible identifies anarchy and the absence of order as realities in direct opposition to the Creator’s authority and threatening to human survival. Just remember the words of divine judgment and human despair that end the Book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

If someone is afraid of being killed just for saying something that someone else doesn’t like, you don’t have any freedom of speech. A freedom to vote means nothing if you have to put your life at risk to vote. Freedom of assembly is meaningless if you cannot peacefully assemble. A functional society requires order and when crime rules in the streets, disorder fill the streets. Crime and violence are not just signs of disorder—they are enemies of order.

Several decades ago, sociologist James Q. Wilson argued that when a society allows disorder to show, as in broken windows left unrepaired, the area goes into inevitable decline. His “broken windows theory” underlined a basic truth—you can diagnose a loss of order simply by looking at a neighborhood. Cities like New York took the theory to heart and devoted great effort toward cleaning up the streets and making neighborhoods safe. The statistics began to prove the point. Streets were cleaner, windows were repaired, and crime went down.

So, what happened?

There was enormous push-back from activists claiming that a racial disparity in arrests revealed a racist policy. The federal courts contributed to the problem by ruling that an imbalance in arrests and prosecutions by race was tantamount to racism, even if there was no evidence of intentional racism. Some activists went so far as to argue that the bigger problem was “mass incarceration” or the visible presence of police in neighborhoods. That’s one factor behind the “abolish the police” movement.

Of course, many people in those very neighborhoods were vocal in wanting the police to be present on their streets and very visible. To state the obvious, a squad car at the curb greatly reduces the risk of robbery at that location. Furthermore, the movement to abolish the police—or even to reduce police presence and visibility—is often opposed by the very people who live in those neighborhoods.

The other big issue is homelessness, and here too you see a liberal-conservative divide. Some liberal activists have gone so far as to argue for a positive right to live on the streets. That has produced homelessness as a lifestyle, and it comes with a predictable pathology. Activists have argued for a new non-judgmental vocabulary, referring to homeless people on the streets—including those who deny assistance—as the “unhoused,” the “houseless,” or “people without a permanent address.”

Clearly, there are individuals and families who need assistance, and that is a moral issue, too. But this does not mean that individuals can resist assistance and claim a right to live on the streets or in public spaces. It is a national shame that so many of our cities look like vast homeless encampments, with predictable complications.

This action by the Trump Administration may or may not lead to lasting change or improvement on the streets of Washington, D.C., but the president had the legal authority to assert federal power in what the Constitution calls the federal “District.” We can certainly hope that lasting change will result. In the meantime, those who claim that the administration has acted unconstitutionally should go back and read the Constitution.