by Lars Møller, American Thinker:
Wherever Democrat majorities have held power for long enough, an inexorable process of decivilization sets in, involving the collapse of civic order and dystopian, slum-like conditions profoundly unworthy of America as “the land of the free.”
Democrat governance in America’s major cities has come to signal a process of institutional unraveling and civic erosion. From New York to Chicago and Detroit, and extending westwards to Los Angeles and San Francisco, prolonged one-party rule correlates with rising disorder and fiscal strain, ultimately driving the flight of productive residents.
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California, a laboratory for Democrat experimentation, currently governed by Gavin Newsom, epitomizes the ideological artefact of “decivilization.” Conservative historian Victor Davis Hanson—himself a fifth-generation farmer of the San Joaquin Valley—has described The Golden State of yesterday as a mismanaged “third-world” entity in which a narrow elite flourishes while the broader population confronts economic contraction, infrastructural decline, and social disintegration. Sadly, his characterization is substantiated across budgets, crime statistics, housing markets, and the state of the public realm.
California’s fiscal position reveals chronic imbalance. Massive budget deficits persist alongside soaring unfunded liabilities for pensions and retiree health care. Residents confront some of the highest gasoline, energy, and sales taxes in the nation. These burdens fall disproportionately on the middle class and small businesses, while progressive tax structures and regulatory regimes shield large technology firms and coastal property owners.
Infrastructure projects compound the sense of dysfunction. The “high-speed rail” initiative, long promoted as a signature progressive achievement, remains unfinished and vastly over budget after years of planning and expenditure. According to critics, environmental water policies have restricted agricultural and urban supply in ways that prioritize abstract ecological goals over practical human needs, producing shortages during periods of drought and heightening vulnerability during emergencies.
Social and legal policies have intensified the strain. Lenient criminal justice reforms reduced consequences for property crime and certain violent offenses, contributing to elevated rates of theft, vandalism, and open-air disorder in commercial districts. High rates of homelessness, particularly the unsheltered variety, have become a defining feature of California’s urban landscape. Expanded access to welfare programs and Medi-Cal for non-citizens has increased demands on public resources already stretched by native-born residents facing high living costs. The cumulative effect is an overburdened middle class that subsidizes both elite environmental preferences and large-scale dependency while watching neighborhoods deteriorate.
Productive capital and middle-class households have responded with exit. As the driving and cohesive force, respectively, of a civilized society, they have no other recourse when faced with political power. Punitive regulations, high housing costs driven by restricted supply, and declining quality of public services have accelerated migration to lower-tax, lower-regulation states. Businesses relocate headquarters or expand operations elsewhere; families seek school systems and streets that feel safer and more ordered. This exodus is not theoretical. On the contrary, it appears in population figures, tax-base erosion, and the hollowing of once-vibrant commercial corridors.
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