15-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Broken Windows at the White House
You know of broken-windows theory. It is the insight, promulgated by the social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, that visible signs of disorder, left untended, stimulate further disorder and crime. This was common sense presented with an academic gloss, and is exactly what your grandmother told you: If you don't replace the window, they'll think nobody cares. Street criminals will notice. Some night soon they'll push in the front door and rob a first-floor apartment. The neighborhood will deteriorate, and crime will spread. That is an order of things conservatives instantly recognize because life isn't abstract to them but real.
There are a lot of broken windows in the Trump administration, and Republicans must start doing what grandma would do. She would not just look away.
