NYC is Not Where the Wild Things Are

They say that New York is a city where anything goes. You could dress like a giraffe, and no one would bat an eye. A man could likely even wear a kilt without causing a stir. But apparently, wearing a bowtie goes beyond even what New Yorkers will tolerate, at least in midtown.

At The King's College, men in the House of Churchill distinguish themselves with various forms of greatness, but also by sporting the Churchill bowtie on Tuesdays. As faculty adviser to the House, I occasionally join them in this.

On my way toward Penn Station this past Tuesday evening, as I waited for the light at Broadway and 33rd, a pedicab driver pulled away from the intersection and said loudly in a mock Brahman accept, "That's why I wear my bowtie!" I thought to myself, "Oh my! I've just been gratuitously mocked by a pedicab driver. By a pedicab driver of all people!"

Perhaps I should have thrown a coffee at him, or even a garbage can. No. It would not have been in keeping with the bowtie. Besides, I remembered this video of a brawl in the street between a pedicab driver and a cabbie. (Go on. How can you not watch it?)



For those of you who are from out of town, "That's New York for ya" is a gross mischaracterization. New Yorkers, even New York cabbies, are a whole lot more civil and friendly than this. In my more than four years here, I have never seen anything even remotely like this. In fact, I have found New Yorkers to be remarkably polite and considerate of one another. (Read my earlier post, "New York--City of Marvels and Manners.")

But it seems that Gotham is also a lot more conventional than it's reputation would lead you to think it is. You can play a guitar in your underwear in Times Square and call yourself the Naked Cowboy, but if you walk down 34th Street dressed that way, you'll make people uncomfortable. (I have not tried this.) I'm not even sure that a man could wear a kilt without getting jeered. And even a distinguished looking bowtie is a step outside the acceptable, inviting cultural punishment from the street.

I'm not complaining, mind you. All of this just confirms my belief that a sustainable, livable political community--which New York City is--requires a degree of mutual consideration and fellow feeling, but also a healthy level of outwardly expressed mutual censorship...some, but not too much.

I love New York. And New York loves me, but not always.

Guns and Public Safety

New York City is a little safer today because an armed citizen with a steady hand blew away four armed men who were robbing his store. This account in the New York Times is moving.

They strode into the restaurant supply store in Harlem shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, four young men intent on robbery, one with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol, the police said. The place may have looked like an easy mark, a high-cash business with an owner in his 70s, known as a gentle, soft-spoken man.

But Charles Augusto Jr., the 72-year-old proprietor of the Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corporation, at 523 West 125th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, had been robbed several times before, despite the fact that his shop is around the corner from the 26th Precinct station house on West 126th Street.

There were no customers in the store, only Mr. Augusto and two employees, a man and a woman. The police said the invaders announced a holdup, approached the two employees and tried to place plastic handcuffs on them. The male employee, a 35-year-old known in the community as J. B., struggled with the gunman, who then hit him on the head with the pistol.

Watching it happen, Mr. Augusto, whom neighborhood friends call Gus, rose from a chair 20 to 30 feet away and took out a loaded Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a pistol-grip handle. The police said he bought it after a robbery 30 years ago.

Mr. Augusto, who has never been in trouble with the law, fired three blasts in rapid succession, the police said.

The first shot took down the gunman at the front. He died almost immediately, according to the police, who said he was 29 and had been arrested for gun possession in Queens last year.... Mr. Augusto’s other two blasts hit all three accomplices, who stumbled out the door, bleeding. One of them, a 21-year-old, staggered across 125th Street and collapsed in front of...one of the city’s biggest housing projects. ...[A]n ambulance rushed him to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where he was dead on arrival. The police said he had a record of arrests for weapons possession and robbery. Another wounded man left a blood trail that the police followed to 125th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The fourth wounded man was picked up, on the basis of witness descriptions, at 128th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace. Both were taken to St. Luke’s.

This is a television report on the incident.



As the WPIX video above reports, Mr. Augusto's shotgun is unregistered, so he faces prosecution for violation of New York gun laws. The laws covering shotguns are more permissive than those pertaining to handguns, however. They require merely a permit, not a license. Furthermore, the New York Times reports, "Under long-established New York law, a person is allowed to use deadly physical force when he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to meet the imminent use of deadly physical force and there is no reasonable chance of retreating from the danger."

All the same, if more people were legally armed--at the very least in their homes and businesses--there would be less need for being armed. It's paradoxical, but true. The same logic applied to the Cold War standoff between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The existence of nuclear weapons and the credible threat of their use in response to aggression preserved peace between the two alliances. As Robert Heinlein is reported to have said, "An armed society is a politie society."

John Locke, the chief theorist of our liberal democratic system of government and way of life, would view Mr. Augusto's actions as perfectly reasonable and defensible. In the Second Treatise of Government, he argues,

...it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it;...

This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it (sections 16-18).

In brief, anyone who would put me in his absolute power, for example at the point of a gun, should be assumed for the sake of one's self-preservation to have murderous intent. And so, being for the moment beyond the protective reach of the civil authorities, anyone in that situation has the moral right to protect himself with deadly force. Even viewing the matter from within a Christian moral framework, I am under no obligation to prefer the life of a murderous aggressor to my own or to that of my family or employees or, for that matter, any innocent person I find being threatened in that way.

This is the thinking of one local observer who was interviewed for the report: “If I were him, I would kill a dozen of them,” he said. “You have to protect your workers and your family. Case closed.”

The good sense of this statement is intuitively obvious. It follows that if people have the right to exercise that freedom, they should have the freedom to obtain the means to it, i.e., to own a gun. It follows in addition that training people in the proper use of fireams, so that in the event they should have to defend themselves they can do it responsibly and safely, is a public good. Instead of teaching children how to use condoms in order to make what some regard as inevitable teenaged sexual activity safer, the public schools (if we are to have public schools) should be training children in the use of firearms the same way they offer driver's education.

God Is Back In New York

This spring, two editors from The Economist published God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (Penguin 2009). John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge distinguish themselves among their associates in the scribbling class with their appreciation for those who are restrained and directed by religious faith, especially the Christian faith.

Of particular interest to me and many readers of this blog is the special mention they give to The King's College in the conclusion.

The Empire State Building...is an embodiment of technological prowess and an icon of modern pop culture, the building where King Kong met his tragic end. Yet this icon of modernity is also home to one of America's leading seats of Evangelcial learning. King's College, which moved into the building in 1999, now occupies two floors of the skyscraper.

They quote the college President, Stan Oakes, saying,

For all the sophistication and prestige of the secular colleges, almost all of their professors traffic in spent ideas that do not work--bad ideas that have had a myriad of disasterous consequences in our generation. They are wrong about God, human nature, wealth, power, marriage, poverty, family, sex, America, liberty, peace and many other decisive issues.

They point out that The King's College is not just about great ideas, but also about the great city that the college inhabits.

Many Christians deliberately retreat from the temptations ofd the big city, attending Bible schools and Christian universities in small towns....King's College deliberately brings young Christians to the heart of the beast. ... [W]here better to train people to exercise influence on the world than the capital of the media and financial world, not to mention the home of the United Nations?

Here are reviews from The New York Times, FoxNews, The New Statesman, and the Washington Post.

New York - City of Marvels and Manners

If you want small town courtesy, come to New York City.

Several weeks ago, as I was walking along 34th Street near the Empire State Building, I saw a sweet young lady in the middle of the road attempting (foolishly) to cross where she should not be and waiting to proceed into the other side of the street. Then it happened. A taxicab--a New York City taxicab!-- came to a stop in the road..between intersections...when he didn't have to...and waved her across, making sure that she got to the other side safely. This is a great city.

I have not always seen things end that way. At the same point in the road a while ago I saw a black sports car going way too fast between lights hit a man J-walking and send him 10 feet into the air. It was very unsettling to see. But for all the traffic and the hurry, midtown accidents have been rare in my experience.

Though I do see rudeness from time to time, what has struck me about this city is the remarkable civility and even kindness. A woman at 34th and 6th, near Macy's, dropped her cell phone and kept walking. A few steps behind her a gangster-looking fellow said, respectfully, "Excuse me, Ma'am! You dropped your cell phone." He picked it up and handed it to her, and she thanked him.

Here is an example of thoughtfulness on a larger scale. The escalator taking people from the Penn Station concourse (subway and Long Island Rail Road) up to the surface at 34th St and 7th Ave is a long one. There are two of them separated by a stairway in the middle. The convention is that you stand to the right on the escalator so that people who want to climb it can pass by on the left. There are times when I see it full of people standing in a long line on the right hand side. When you're climbing the escalator and someone does happen to be blocking your way, you can gently say "excuse me," and the person will shift aside. You say "thank you," and the city works well.

Consider the significance of what's happening on that escalator. Twenty or thirty New Yorkers standing in a line thinking of other people's convenience. And that simple practice is in turn reinforcing the habit in them of thinking of others generally. I see this all the time, and it is how communities flourish. Twenty-five years ago, James Q. Wilson wrote about broadly improving civility through what one might call the trickle up effect of enforcing small improvements in self-restraint and mutual respect (James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, "Broken Windows," The Atlantic, March 1982).

It is no wonder to me that Reader's Digest ("How Polite Are We?") found New York City to be the most polite major city in the world, exceeding even Toronto in human decency. Ed Koch speculates that it might be the 9/11 effect. Personally, I suspect a combination of Christian influence (there are more of them in New York that you'd think), the residue of Christian culture, and the uniquely American egalitarianism that engenders a fellow feeling that makes this sort of mutual help second nature to those who live under its influence.

See "New York (!) named politest city in world"

Someone writing in the New York Times in 1910 found the same thing: "New York is the Politest City in the World."

Readers Digest explains the politeness test.

We sent undercover reporters -- half of them men, half women -- from Reader's Digest editions in 35 countries to assess the citizens of their most populous city. In each location we conducted three tests:

• We walked into public buildings 20 times behind people to see if they would hold the door open for us.
• We bought small items from 20 shops and recorded whether the sales assistants said "Thank you".
• We dropped a folder full of papers in 20 busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up.

It is interesting that Asia scores low for politeness, though the story led off with a flattering anecdote about a Korean store clerk. "Asia. Eight out of nine cities there finished in the bottom 11."

In last place was Mumbai, India, where courtesy in shops was particularly lacking. When our female reporter bought a pair of plastic hair clips at a convenience store, sales assistant Shivlal Kumavat turned his back on her as soon as she paid. Asked why, the 31-year-old was unapologetic: "Madam, I am not an educated guy. I hand goods over to the customers and that's it."

In a government-run supermarket a young female employee lied that she hadn't seen what had happened when asked why she didn't help our reporter pick up his papers. Another worker stepped on them. "That's nothing," said the store's security guard. "In Mumbai, they'll step over a person who has fallen in the street."

Good manners are a way of loving your neighbor, and when widely observed they make for a happier life. What contributes to this sort of citizen character is a matter of serious study. It is also a serious question as to whether our civic leaders should be paying any attention at all to the what cultivates this or that character in the citizens. A libertarian would say that people should be "free to choose" whether to be polite or not. (Isn't it amazing how some people can boil the vast complexity of life down to three words?) Serious statesmen, on the other hand, who feel the weight of their unique civic responsibility more heavily, know that it is not only bad company but also bad public policy that corrupts good manners.

The King's College Puzzles New York City

The King's College is in the news again. But it's the same story that everyone writes. The Village Voice. The Washington Post. Now The New York Times. ("In a Worldly City's Tallest Tower, a College With a Heavenly Bent," December 19, 2008. The title as it originally appeared was "For Evangelical College, Home is Where the Sin Is." I wonder what went into that editorial change of mind.)

They just can't get over the fact that an Evangelical Christian college would wade into a city that provides so many opportunities for sin. (Never mind the cultural, intellectual, media, and business opportunities.)

But the opportunity for sin is not isolated in any one city or in cities in general. Sin is in every heart and makes its own opportunities. You can't run away from sin any more than you can run away from your shadow.

These reporters marvel that The King's College doesn't have a long list of rules and that yet they don't exercise the licentious freedom that other college students do. That is because being a Christian is not just a church affiliation or an ideology, as these reporters imagine it is. It is a work of grace in the human heart that drives out old loves and introduces new ones, viz., a love for Christ and for all that he loves. A Christian who is growing spiritually is a Christian who is growing in those new loves. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 35) tells us that sanctification is "the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness." I see this in my students.

So the story reports Jonathan Seidl, a senior at the college, saying, “One of the reasons we’re not interested in getting drunk like ‘typical’ college students is because our faith teaches us that being responsible, and in some cases abstaining from those things, offers the most fulfilling life.” The reporter adds, "The same applied, several students said, to premarital sex."

But I'm glad we got the New York Times before the paper goes belly up. Perhaps The New York Sun, a much better newspaper, will return to take it's place.

Principal New York Films

I have finally got around to assembling my list of the greatest films that feature New York City. This completes the project that began with "New York City Film Classics" and "Again, the Big Apple on the Big Screen." If you think I am missing a very important title, please let me know. I will either quickly correct the mistake before my shame on the point extends further across the globe (I don't say planet; it's so Gore lefty secular Saturday morning cartoons), or I will make a point of watching it before too long.


If you consult the lists in either the left or the right hand column, you will see these Principal New York Films:

King Kong (Fay Wray, 1933)
Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles, 1941)
Miracle on 34th Street (dir. George Seaton, 1947)
An Affair to Remember (Cary Grant, 1957)
On The Waterfront (Marlon Brando; dir. Elia Kazan, 1957)
West Side Story (Natalie Wood, 1961)
Godfather (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Mean Streets (Robert De Niro, dir. Martin Scorsese, 1973)
Serpico (Al Pacino, dir. Sidney Lumet, 1973)
Death Wish (Charles Bronson, 1974)
Dog Day Afternoon (Al Pacino, dir. Sidney Lumet, 1975)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
Taxi Driver (Robert De Niro, dir. Martin Scorsese, 1976)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
Crocodile Dundee (Paul Hogan, 1986)
Metropolitan (dir. Whit Stillman, 1990)
Newsies (Christian Bale, 1992)
A Bronx Tale (dir. Robert DeNiro, 1993)
Men In Black (Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, 1997)
Gangs of New York (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2002)

A friend in Toronto added this to one of my original posts:

For your consideration, three new films using NYC as a backdrop/nemesis/protagonist. Naked City (1948) was one of the first on-location movies to be filmed in New York. A good little film noir. Sweet Smell of Success (1957), starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, portrays New York in a very dark way (literally and figuratively). Curtis plays against type beautifully. On the Waterfront (1954) - well, what can you say about this classic? Shame, David, for not including it in your first round!

Certainly now that New York City is a lovely town full of polite people, we can expect that any films that take the city as their theme will be strictly historical in nature, like Newsies ('92), Bronx Tale ('93) and Gangs ('02). The citizen's gain is the moviegoer's loss.

Greatness and Cities

Source: National Geographic

The King's College is nestled in New York City not only because we think we have something to bring to the city, but also because there is much that New York City has to give us. New York is a rich store of civilization and conversation and generally the human concourse on which thoughtful people reflect with great profit. You find these things in many cities, but in New York it is magnified and intensified. I have lived in Toronto, Boston and New York. I have lived in the cornfields of Iowa, the hills of western Pennsylvania and the the charming mill towns of central Massachusetts. It is cities, however, that provide a unique arena for those who are ambitious to expand the mind and exercise the soul.

Wilfred McClay, humanities professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, argues in a recent First Things On the Square column that conservatives should have a natural affinity for cities. ("Why Conservatives Should Care About Cities," November 14, 2007). In short, "the idea of conservatism, far from being anti-urban, has always been inextricably bound up in the history and experience of great cities."

As an aside, he once again pays tribute to the building that houses my college, "the most beautiful tall building in the world, the Empire State, a sight that still catches my breath." In A Student's Guide to U.S. History (ISI Books, 2000), he speaks at greater length on this marvelous fashioning of God's creation glory by the hands of men.

And infinitely more impressive than the elegant eclecticism of Jefferson's Monticello was the astounding tapering design of Manhattan's Empire State Building, a colossus raised up defiantly, against all odds, during the worst depths of the Great Depression, as a beacon of hope and a monument to American ambition. If there is an abiding American yearning to flee to rootless city for the rooted land, there is also an equal and opposite yearning, who finest aspect is captured in the stirring breath-catching sight of that one solitary building, rising with magnificent improbability above the lowlands of Thirty-fourth Street. (p.44)

Fred, Huck and Rudy Part IV

 

I'm reading more and more social conservatives who are coming out for Rudy. They are are seeing that there is no righteous evangelical statesman rising from the lower ranks or riding in to answer the call. They are re-assessing Rudy and they are being persuaded by arguments that appeal to prudence. Martin Knight at RedState.com is one who has seen "Rudy's Appeal."

He likes Giuliani primarily because "he fights." He has a powerful point. When you are faced with wishy washy Republicans in a Democrat controlled Congress where the far left and jaw droppingly irresponsible Harry Reid and Nancy Polosi are in the top positions of leadership, an unbudgeable scrapper of a President is no small asset. In Giuliani, Knight sees, "an articulate, intelligent, tenacious and aggressive Conservatism that does not shy away from a fight, routinely engages the other side on the battlefield of ideas, and never ever pulls its punches."

Rudy's tenure as Mayor of New York is remarkable not just for what he got accomplished, from reducing crime, slashing welfare rolls, cleaning up Times Square, cutting taxes, etc. - things that conventional (i.e. liberal) wisdom had long declared impossible in "ungovernable" New York City, it was that he was able to be so effective in the face of the unrelenting and vituperative hostility of the New York Press Corps (at the head of which, of course, the New York Times), wave after wave of constant attacks and slander by the Left's myriad shrieking organizations, a virtually dead Gotham GOP (which, to his discredit, he did not do much to revitalize) and a City Council where his allies were less than 10% of the total body.

Knight lists what Rudy thought was worth going toe to toe over with the fire-breathing New York elite:

• supervised a 57-percent overall drop in crime and a 65-percent plunge in homicides.

• curbed or killed 23 taxes totaling $8 billion. He slashed Gotham's top income-tax rate 21 percent and local taxes' share of personal income 15.9 percent. Giuliani called hiking taxes after September 11 "a dumb, stupid, idiotic, and moronic thing to do."

• While hiring 12 percent more cops and 12.8 percent more teachers, Giuliani sliced manpower 17.2 percent, from 117,494 workers to 97,338.

• Rather than "perpetuate discrimination," Giuliani junked Gotham's 20 percent set-asides for female and minority contractors.

• Two years before federal welfare reform, Giuliani began shrinking public-assistance rolls from 1,112,490 recipients in 1993 to 462,595 in 2001, a 58.4-percent decrease to 1966 levels. He also renamed welfare offices "Job Centers."

• Foster-care residents dropped from 42,000 to 28,700 between 1996 and 2001, while adoptions zoomed 65 percent to 21,189.

• Giuliani privatized 69.8 percent of city-owned apartments; sold WNYC-TV, WNYC-FM, WNYC-AM, and Gotham's share of the U.N. Plaza Hotel; and invited the private Central Park Conservancy to manage Manhattan's 843-acre rectangular garden.

• Giuliani advocated school vouchers, launched a Charter School Fund, and scrapped tenure for principals.

• While many libertarians frowned, Giuliani padlocked porn shops in Times Square, paving the way for smut-free cineplexes and Disney musicals.

Those are family values. That approach is the other side of the mountain from Hillary Clinton who is sure to be the Democratic nominee.

Even our Lord told us to be innocent as doves, but wise as serpents. In other words, you can behave prudently among the mixed multitude with whom we share this world, and still maintain a good conscience.

Also read Wall Street Journals' Daniel Henninger, "Can Rudy and the Right Come to Terms" (October 25, 2007), and a fine couple of articles by Tony Blankley on the prudence that Christian citizens should exercise when casting a conscientious vote: "The GOP Needs a Survival Instinct" (October 3) and "Electoral Pragmatism Reconsidered" (October 10).

Accountability a One Way Street in NYC Schools

Here is an interesting insight into how public school teachers think...perhaps just in New York City. "Schools Wait, Teeth Gritted: Their Grades are Coming," by Julie Bosman (New York Times, Sept. 1, 2007). It seems that New York's Mayor Bloomberg is holding schools accountable for their job performance.

Making good on a promise to hold educators more accountable for student performance, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will oversee the distribution of report cards for each of the city’s schools next month. Each school (and by extension its principal) will receive a letter grade in the mail, and the grade and the data that led to it will be posted on the Web, where parents can see and possibly stew over them.

Of course, you cannot expect a complacent, inefficient and ineffective bureaucracy to cooperate supportively. If teachers and administrators were doing all that they could to provide the best public service, these measures would never have crossed anyone's mind (as in earlier times they didn't).

Judith Menken, the outspoken principal of the small Muscota New School in Inwood, Manhattan, is bracing for the moment when she will receive a stark appraisal of her school’s performance, a letter grade of A through F. She is still debating whether or not she will read the report.

Why would she not read the report? She's a school principal. Assessing and grading people is what her own institution does. Does she see no value in it for herself? Perhaps she sees no value in it for her students. Is that the problem?

“I guess I’ll probably look at it,” said Ms. Menken. She expects a B, at best, she added. “I’m sure I’ll feel bad. People are going to be very hurt and demoralized. It’s like a public embarrassment.”

Yes, that's an aspect of accountability. Public schools are a public trust. They should be publicly accountable. When they fail, they fail publicly. When held to account, they should be held to account publicly. Furthermore, public humiliation is a good incentive for avoiding it in the future by improving performance.

Back at the Muscota school, Ms. Menken, who has seen countless changes and reorganizations over the years, is holding out hope that Mr. Klein will eventually abandon the grading system. “It’ll be like everything else,” said Ms. Menken, who has worked in the New York City public schools for 36 years. “It won’t work, and they’ll chuck it.”

Principal Menken appears to believe that nothing can improve the public school system in New York. And she's comfortable with that. On the theory that if something does not work you chuck it, perhaps that is the only practical and publicly responsible thing to do with the New York public schools. I have no doubt that private initiatives would far outperform what we have now. As a businessman, the mayor must secretly know this. (My children are thriving at a classical Christian school.)