The old saying is that a conservative is a liberal who was mugged by reality. Sometimes, that “mugging” is literal...as in people facing actual criminals robbing and assaulting them. It turns out that the famously leftist residents of Greenwich Village in New York (beatniks, hippies, Stonewall gays, BLM activists) have been mugged by that reality for four years, and they’ve finally said, “Enough!”

For one hundred years, Greenwich Village has had a leftist tilt. Artists discovered it in the early 20th century, so it was always a place in which progressive politics (i.e., soft socialism) predominated.

In 1969, rather than being a cool “beatnik” or “hippy” hangout, it suddenly became a violent, cutting-edge neighborhood when members of the gay community started the Stonewall riots. (And I think the Founders would be surprised were they to learn that the bar where gay and transgender men suddenly went nuclear is now a National Historic Landmark.)

In sum, Greenwich Village is the home of artsy leftism. No wonder, then, that Greenwich Village happily participated in the whole “Black Lives Matter/Defund the Police” movement that followed George Floyd’s drug death in 2020. Thus, in June 2020, when the BLM protests were at their peak, the Greenwich Time proudly wrote about the community’s participation in the movement.

However, a lot has happened in the four years since that magical (for leftists) George Floyd moment. It turns out that, with police defunded, derided, demeaned, and running scared of finding themselves turned into the next Derek Chauvin or even the next victim in the morgue, crime has soared. Suddenly, a whole bunch of Greenwich Village residents have decided that, when it comes to real muggings, police lives matter as much as the residents’ own lives do:

Greenwich Village isn’t so freewheelin’ anymore.

The bohemian Mecca made famous for its anything-goes attitude, counterculture musical scene and clashes with police is begging for law enforcement, a shocking new survey found.

The Sixth Precinct Community Council polled 600 neighborhood residents and found 487 of them — 83% — want more cops on the streets.

And 74% of Villagers said the Empire State needed stronger prosecution for drug dealing, while 80% thought New York needed stricter bail laws, according to the first-of-its-kind survey, conducted in February and March.

I opened with a famous saying about being mugged by reality. I’ll close with “Stein’s Law,” which Herbert Stein created when analyzing economic trends: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Just as funny money policies cannot last forever, neither can funny crime policies. When you stop enforcing the law, criminals become ascendant, and normal people, even leftists, will finally cry “Uncle.”

Image by Felix Stahlberg. CC BY 2.0.