The idea of purging the homeless, through initiatives such as drug decriminalization, is no longer in fashion. That doesn’t stop the ideological pendulum from brushing against it on the other side.
This arc is evident in California, where public policy is a mess of incompetence and overcorrection. That is expected in so blue and overgoverned a state. But it means that wild propositions come out of both sides of California politics.
Such is the case with Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris, a Republican whose comments about wanting to enclose the city’s homeless population on a golf course and giving them “all the fentanyl they want” have inspired pushback. If initially somewhat of a joke, Parris iterated the argument in seriousness a couple of months later on Fox News: “I wish that the president would give us a purge. Because we do need to purge these people.”
It is surely reviling and an affront to human dignity. Those outraged at Parris’s suggestions of drug handouts and encampments include many of the leftist social justice strain. And as we know, this approach to homeless policy is unpopular on the Right, where policing is emphasized as a first step and recourse to mental health institutions has remained a favorable option. Where would Parris’s comfort level with the idea have originated?
Of course, the answer lies in the fact that California has gone down these precise routes in the recent past. Perhaps Parris is disposed to having outlandish ideas in the first place. Even so, most of his audacity to offer a purge as a real, mayoral solution developed from the fact that the framework is already familiar to the state. After decades of failed “harm reduction” techniques such as free drug paraphernalia distribution, San Francisco just this month rolled back the system by implementing conditions on recipients, choosing not to eliminate it altogether. Also this year, California officials have decided to explore the route of criminal prosecution toward encampments, deciding that the camp-encouraging approach to its homeless population has proved to backfire.
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In this light, backlash to Parris’s comments sounds better evidenced but less validated. He spoke with harsher phrasing what, practically, used to be orthodox leftism. Motivation differs — Parris comes off much more callous than the standard liberal activist — but the outcome is largely static. That is one price of an ethics based solely on politics: Contradiction is inevitable, and destruction ensues in the meantime.
And while it’s good that Californians have arrived at a rejection of negligent drug and encampment policies, that destruction will have continuous, lasting effects. Repair is possible if they keep to the new program. For now, the Right taking the way of destruction is on par with the latest Republican ethos.