Is there any reason to think this time will be different?

When public policies have produced disastrous results and when alternative policies have resulted in immediate, seemingly miraculous improvement, why would anyone want to go back to the earlier policies? Is there any reason to suppose that this time will be different?

Not that I can see. The earlier policies, a pullback from active policing and certain punishment and open-handed welfare system providing incomes for single mothers were put in place in the 1960s, within living memory for some of us. The intentions were good. It was a time of high hopefulness that America’s shameful history of racial discrimination and mistreatment was over.