beating up on Kotkin
Joel Kotkin's recent Washington Post essay, now lying atop his web page, is worth discusssing for a few of its errors.

Kotkin begins by wasting space recycling claims about how American cities are losing population in the wake of 9/11 (based on Census estimates, which, as noted in this article, are not worth all that much, because 1990s mid-decade Census estimates were far more pessimistic than justified by the actual 2000 Census).

He also asserts that sprawling auto dependency makes terrorism harder (disproven by his own admission in the same article that al-Qaeda terrorists plotted to blow up the airport in the national capital of sprawl, Los Angeles).

But the most interesting (and disturbing) portion of his article is his attempt to blame cities for terrorism. Kotkin writes:

"Now, cities may have to face a different menace. Sadly, many metropolitan leaders seem less than prepared to meet today's current terrorist threat head-on, in part due to the trendy multiculturalism that now characterizes so many Western cities. Consider London's multiculturalist Mayor Ken Livingstone, who last year actually welcomed a radical jihadist, Egyptian cleric Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, to his city.

Multiculturalism and overly permissive immigration policies have also played a role here in North America. Unfettered in their own enclave, Muslim extremists in Brooklyn helped organize the first attack on the World Trade Center in the early 1990s. Lax Canadian refugee policies have allowed radical Islamists to find homes in places like Montreal and Toronto, where some might have planned attacks on this country, like the alleged 2000 plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

In continental Europe, multiculturalism has been elevated to a kind of social dogma, exacerbating the separation between Muslim immigrants and the host society. For decades, immigrants have not been encouraged or expected to accept German, Dutch or British norms, nor have those societies made efforts to integrate the newcomers. Not surprisingly, jihadist agitation has flourished in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin and Paris as well as London.

If cities are to survive in Europe or elsewhere, they will need to face this latest threat to urban survival with something more than liberal platitudes, displays of pluck and willful determination. They will have to face up to the need for sometimes harsh measures, such as tighter immigration laws, preventive detention and widespread surveillance of suspected terrorists, to protect the urban future.

They will also need to institute measures that encourage immigrants to assimilate, such as fostering greater economic opportunity for newcomers or enforcing immersion in the national language and political institutions. Militant anti-Western Islamist agitation -- actively supportive of al Qaeda, for example -- also must be rooted out; it can be no more tolerated in Western cities today than overt support for Nazism should have been during World War II."

In other words, Kotkin takes the "blaming the city for its problems" approach to a whole new level: not only is he blaming cities for bad schools and high crime, he is suggesting that if only cities stopped allowing Muslim immigrants to enter and agitate they would be safer."

Kotkin overlooks one small fact: the issues he discussed (to the extent that they are within the control of any government) are national issues, NOT issues within cities' control.

To go blow by blow:

1. Kotkin attacks "overly permissive immigration policies" and asserts that cities need to "face up to the need . . . for tighter immigration laws." But cities have no control over which foreign immigrants live within their borders. Immigration is an issue handled by the national government, both in America and (as far as I know) elsewhere.

2. Kotkin attacks "multiculturalism." Multiculturalism is an intellectual (or perhaps pseudo-intellectual) movement, not something that government can legislate or abolish. Does Kotkin seriously think that if Ken Livingstone woke up one morning and issued a press release stating "Ken Livingstone hates Muslims", that radical Islamists would be deterred from living in or blowing up London?

3. Kotkin also wants curbs on civil liberties, endorsing more preventive detention, police surveillance and curbs on hateful speech. I think he might have a point- but again, these are not local issues. Even in New York City's judges started denying bail more routinely, they are limited by state criminal justice law and by federal constitutional criminal procedure (since the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments all relate at least in part to criminal justice). Similarly, any attempt to curb radical Islamic speech implicates First Amendment issues.

4. Kotkin says cities must "institute measures that encourage immigrants to assimilate, such as fostering greater economic opportunity for newcomers or enforcing immersion in the national language and political institutions." Kotkin fails to say how cities (or indeed any government) can do such things. And since Kotkin himself writes earlier in his essay that "businesses and industries escape the urban core to operate in small towns and even the countryside", he really has no reason to believe that cities can do anything to "foster greater economic opportunity to newcomers." Perhaps cities could "enforce immersion in the national language" by abolishing bilingual education- but since as far as I know the 9/11 and London terrorists knew English, I don't see what this point has to do with terrorism.