by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
The American Enterprise Online<\/em><\/p>\n W<\/span>ar-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make of each.<\/p>\n As a fifth-generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies, and 360 instances of assault in California \u2014 yesterday, today, tomorrow, and every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about \u201cNearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this month!\u201d<\/p>\n How about a monthly media dose of \u201c600 women raped in February alone!\u201d Or try, \u201cOver 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!\u201d Those do not even make up all of the state\u2019s yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.<\/p>\n Iraq\u2019s judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam let out 100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself still sits in the dock months after his trial began. But imagine an Iraq with a penal system like California\u2019s with 170,000 criminals \u2014 an inmate population larger than those of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined.<\/p>\n Just to house such a shadow population costs our state nearly $7 billion a year \u2014 or about the same price of keeping 40,000 Army personnel per year in Iraq. What would be the image of our Golden State if we were reminded each morning, \u201cAnother $20 million spent today on housing our criminals\u201d?<\/p>\n Some of California\u2019s most recent prison scandals would be easy to sensationalize: \u201cGuards watch as inmates are raped!\u201d Or \u201cCorrection officer accused of having sex with underaged detainee!\u201d And apropos of Saddam\u2019s sluggish trial, remember that our home state multiple murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in December 2005 \u2014 26 years after he was originally sentenced.<\/p>\n M<\/span>uch is made of the inability to patrol Iraq\u2019s borders with Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. But California has only a single border with a foreign nation, not six. Yet over 3 million foreigners who snuck in illegally now live in our state. Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted alien felons incarcerated in our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the potential tabloid headlines: \u201cIllegal aliens in state comprise population larger than San Francisco!\u201d or \u201cDrugs, criminals, and smugglers given free pass into California!\u201d<\/p>\n Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes \u2014 nearly twice the number of Americans lost so far in three years of combat operations in Iraq. In some sense, then, our badly maintained roads, and often poorly trained and sometimes intoxicated drivers, are even more lethal than Improvised Explosive Devices. Perhaps tomorrow\u2019s headline might scream out at us: \u201c300 Californians to perish this month on state highways! Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!\u201d<\/p>\n In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying nearly the highest rates for electricity in the United States. Before complaining about the smoke in Baghdad rising from private generators, think back to the run on generators in California when they were contemplated as a future part of every household\u2019s line of defense.<\/p>\n We\u2019re told that Iraq\u2019s finances are a mess. Yet until recently, so were California\u2019s. Two years ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a $38 billion annual budget shortfall. That could have made for strong morning newscast teasers: \u201cAnother $100 million borrowed today \u2014 $3 billion more in red ink to pile up by month\u2019s end!\u201d<\/p>\n So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be sketched by a reporter intent on doing so as a bank rupt, crime-ridden den with murderous highways, tens of thousands of inmates, with wide-open borders.<\/p>\n I myself recently returned home to California, without incident, from a visit to Iraq\u2019s notorious Sunni Triangle. While I was gone, a drug-addicted criminal with a long list of convictions broke into our kitchen at 4 a.m., was surprised by my wife and daughter, and fled with our credit cards, cash, keys, and cell phones.<\/p>\n Sometimes I wonder who really was safer that week.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson The American Enterprise Online War-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[775],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-12U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3994,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/in-the-eye-of-the-beholder\/","url_meta":{"origin":4024,"position":0},"title":"In the Eye of the Beholder","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine if we'd reported and opined on WWII the way we do now. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online I think Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall conducted the Second World War brilliantly, despite \u201cthousands of mistakes.\u201d But I can also envision how our present intelligentsia and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2006"","block_context":{"text":"May 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/may-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/there-is-no-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":4024,"position":1},"title":"There Is No California","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line. Consider the disconnects: California's combined income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, but the state's deficit is still about $16 billion. It's estimated that more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1868,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obamarang\/","url_meta":{"origin":4024,"position":2},"title":"The Obamarang","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media All politicians fudge on their promises. But this president manages to transcend the normal political exaggeration and dissimulation. Whereas past executives shaded the truth, Barack Obama trumps that: on almost every key issue, what Obama says he will do, and what he says is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11534,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-costs-of-presidential-candor\/","url_meta":{"origin":4024,"position":3},"title":"The Costs of Presidential Candor","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 26, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Predictably, Donald Trump was attacked both by the establishment and the media as \u201ccrude,\u201d \u201cunpresidential,\u201d and \u201cgratuitous\u201d for a recent series of blunt and graphic statements on a variety of current policies. Oddly, the implied charge this time around was not that Trump makes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3836,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jerry-brown-modern-sisyphus\/","url_meta":{"origin":4024,"position":4},"title":"Jerry Brown, Modern Sisyphus","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California Gov. Jerry Brown must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. But right now it seems almost a hopeless task since the state's disastrous budget is a symptom, not the cause, of California's much larger nightmare. Take unemployment. It currently runs 12.6\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3347,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-razors-edge\/","url_meta":{"origin":4024,"position":5},"title":"The Razor’s Edge","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media California in the Balance We calibrate California\u2019s decline by its myriad of paradoxes. The nation\u2019s highest bundle of gas, sales, and income taxes cannot close the nation\u2019s largest annual deficit at $25 billion. Test scores are at the country\u2019s near bottom; teachers\u2019 salaries at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4025,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions\/4025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}