Negotiating with terrorists, at least up until the current administration’s tenure, had always been off the table for our country; and yet we see the Black Lives Matter anarchists’ use of violence and intimidation rewarded by some of our most stalwart politicians.

Cities turned into riot zones, a preferred tactic of Black Lives Matter leftists to manipulate the genuine misery and dissolute practices of our urban ghettos, are now on the receiving end of what amounts to a hefty ransom payment. The willingness with which politicians are caving to this situation is almost as surprising as the names of the politicians who are writing the checks on behalf of the taxpayers.

ADVERTISEMENT

My own city, Milwaukee, is chief among these beneficiaries of taxpayer “generosity.” Just this past week, Governor Scott Walker routed $4.5 million of state and federal funds to “train workers, help businesses and deal with foreclosed homes” to the city. Taxpayers already spend billions per year for the original albeit failing job-training and anti-poverty program called K-12 public education. An actual breakdown of the allocation reveals just who will benefit: the nonprofits and developers chummy enough with the progressive left to have gotten to the front of the line.

It was none other than the race-provocatuer Jesse Jackson who delivered the ransom demands, just days after the Milwaukee rioting, when he said that not enough had been spent on urban reconstruction in Milwaukee and other cities. He failed to mention that these cities are all Democrat-run. It makes you wonder what happened to the stimulus funds that were meant to solve these problems. Not enough quite enough money to stave off massive rioting, looting, and loss of life, it appears.

Walker’s response is the typical well-meaning but destructive misstep so many GOP politicians have pursued, but the damage they do in implicitly validating the claims of Black Lives Matter is even more destructive than the loss of taxpayer dollars for valid taxpayer spending.

We’ve seen this all before; after cities were torn apart by riots in the 1960s, billions of dollars were spent on urban renewal—and things only got worse in the ghetto. In fact, the funding of the urban pathologies back then has wrought the very situation we are dealing with now.

If the GOP wants to help, and I believe they do, it won’t be by funding the cultural rot of the American ghetto or giving credence to the message that this has anything to do with a lack of funds being funneled to the left’s nonprofits and developer buddies.

And truly, my conservative friends should know better.

It is the failed urban policy of the progressive left that is responsible for the misery of the ghetto, the need for more money to fund this manipulation. The Democrat Party has torn down every element of strong and independent society that could have been a lifeline to the black community, although they’ve been frustratingly (to them) unable to tear away their faith.

As Ben Shapiro wrote in National Review this past week, it’s all so cringingly clear: the left simply cannot let a “good crisis” go to waste. In fact, it appears they’re not above creating that crisis to begin with.

Our conservative leaders need to hold the line on this one, no matter how enticing it may be to seek the approval of the progressive left by doling out money to the cities. I have news for politicians considering this type of move: you’ll never get the progressives to thank you, to accept you, or to acknowledge that you’ve paid their ransom with the good-faith effort to reach out to the black community and show that you care.

The progressives don’t care about the black community or the urban ghetto. They care about funding their nonprofits, their builders and developers, and their machine of poverty manipulation.

We need the tough love parenting that actually helps restore independence and self-reliance, not the rewarding of bad behavior that sends a child down an irrecoverable path but feels good. The Democrats have now seen that their riot diplomacy works, and it will be at the expense of yet more lives wasted and lost in the progressive’s American ghetto.

Clarke is the Milwaukee County sheriff. Follow him @SheriffClarke

The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.