His point is apt but insufficiently gloomy. It skirts the real fear that is and should be on the collective American mind: that the interest-group capture and despoliation of Detroit has evil implications for the viability of American democracy as a whole, not just in a few cities, and that we are on the edge of serious, and perhaps even violent, upheaval.

No one opposes the most basic version of a welfare state, one that provides essential public facilities, cares for the destitute and unfortunate, educates children, and protects public health and safety. Indeed, as the Supreme Court said in 1881, during an era regarded by the Left as a dark-age trough, “It will not be denied by any one that these are public purposes in which the whole community have an interest.”