ROGER L. SIMON: The Real Villain Of Ferguson. “The Great Society. There, I’ve said it. The Great Society, which I voted for and supported from the bottom of my heart, is the villain behind Ferguson. Ferguson is the Great Society writ large because the Great Society convinced, and then reassured, black people that they were victims, taught them that being a victim and playing a victim was the way to go always and forever. And then it repeated the point ad infinitum from its debut in 1964 until now — a conveniently easy to compute fifty years — as it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Great Society and similar policies screwed black people to the wall. It was racist to the core without knowing it. Nobody used the N-word. In fact, it was forbidden, unless you were Dr. Dre or somebody. But it did its job without the word and did it better for being in disguise.”

UPDATE: By the way, the press coverage of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon on this doesn’t seem to emphasize that he’s a Democrat. But as the party of Bull Connor and Richard Daley, the Democrats have a long, ugly track record in dealing badly with urban unrest. . . .