The Decline of Detroit

Detroit was once a symbol of extraordinary prosperity. With nearly two million people, ranking as the fifth-largest city in the United States, Detroit had the highest per-capita economic output among U. S. cities during the 1950s, at a time when the United States boasted the highest per-capita GDP in the entire world. Flash forward to 2025, and Detroit has consistently been among the most violent and impoverished major cities in America: in fact, Detroit has consistently ranked at or near the top of major U. S. cities in terms of poverty rates, unemployment rates, and murder rates.

The decline of Detroit has been swift: from the beacon of prosperity to one of the 'murder capitals' of America. What was built in the course of decades was essentially destroyed in the course of years as race riots hastened ‘white flight’: the movement of middle-class (mostly ‘white’) Detroiters to the relative safety of the recently-developed and rapidly-expanding suburbs outside of the city. This reached a fever pitch with the riots of 1967, and, in all, it was the result of various factors, not least of which was the ‘Great Migration’ of Southern blacks into Detroit during the boom of the automobile industry (particularly in the decades following World War II), along with the political and ideological shifts which accompanied this ‘Great Migration’ through the New Frontier and Great Society programs under the leadership of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson; initiatives which dramatically expanded welfare programs, increased federal intervention, reformed incentives, heightened racial tensions, and weakened community cohesion and accountability. The results speak volumes:

At no time in American history has there ever been a higher incidence of single-parent households: seventy-five percent among black families, sixty-one percent among Hispanic/Latino families, thirty-nine percent among white families, and twenty-three percent among Asian families. These figures are vastly different from the data compiled half a century ago. Indeed, since 1970, out-of-wedlock birth rates have soared. In 1965, twenty-four percent of black infants and three percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990, the rates had suddenly risen to sixty-four percent for black infants, eighteen percent for whites; and, it is worth noting, there are a number of alarming outcomes particularly associated with single-parent households, not least of which is the prevalence of economic instability, welfare dependency, academic and professional underperformance, criminal activity and psychological disorders — not to mention this demographic's tendency to favor Leftist administrations.

- Death by Socialism (2024) 

These policies and the (predictable) results combined with Mayor Coleman Young’s hostility toward proactive policing to undermine deterrence strategies, to demoralize (and reduce the effectiveness of) officers of the Detroit Police Department, and to turn the city of Detroit into a powder keg. Among the many indignities suffered in Detroit, Mayor Young’s administration dismantled proactive police units such as STRESS (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) and the so-called 'Tac Squad', otherwise known as 'the Big Four'; with these units representing prior attempts at restoring some semblance of safety in Detroit, in an effort to stem the mass exodus of businesses and middle-class residents. 

STRESS was created in 1971 in response to rising levels of violent crime in Detroit's inner-city neighborhoods. It was created to combat the rising rates of armed robbery, street violence, and other forms of criminal activity in Detroit, with a focus primarily on preventing and responding to street-level crime, such as robberies, muggings, and assaults. Unlike STRESS, comprised of plainclothes officers, the 'Big Four' was established in the late 1970s, enlisting uniformed officers with a focus on coordinated, tactical operations to address particular types of violent crime, including gang activity, drug trafficking, and organized crime. The official mission was to provide specialized police support for high-crime areas, including drug hot spots, violent street gangs, and armed robberies. 

Along with the aforementioned political initiatives, Mayor Young's dismantling of Detroit's special police units (in 1974 for STRESS, and in 1979 for the Tac Squad) helped to create the conditions for an even more unsafe inner-city, even more Detroiters fleeing to the suburbs, and the continued rise in the incidence of broken families and violent crime, a vicious cycle begetting more dysfunction, more disorder, more violent crime, and fewer decent and hardworking residents remaining in the city; all while democratically-elected Leftist leaders like Mayor Coleman Young tolerated or otherwise engendered social disorder (and often leveraged it to their political advantage) while raising taxes and pursuing ideological projects, better termed 'pet projects' or 'hobbies' — each exemplified by Hart Plaza, developed with Young's support (between 1974 and '79) as a monument celebrating communist ideas on the riverfront of downtown Detroit; a city built on the initiative and genius of enterprising capitalists and free-thinking pioneers. 

In subsequent years, the city of Detroit would suffer increasingly more violent crime and even higher murder rates; and from the 1970s through the 1990s and beyond, Detroit would be known as 'Murder City', consistently ranking among the cities with the highest murder rates in the United States, all while the city's population has continued to shrink year after year.

As a result of these political, social, and economic factors, the disintegration of the nuclear family accelerated, just as social trust and civic cohesion essentially vanished, compounding the loss of prosperity that had made Detroit a global exemplar of industry, initiative, and urban success; a city once shining as a beacon of hope, resourcefulness, and prosperity, but a city which has since collapsed as a symbol of America's fall from grace, a testament to the social and cultural decay infecting America, and a prime example of a low-trust society rife with crime and widely-held political attitudes hostile to 'white' Americans and antithetical to real progress and social harmony.

The history of the Detroit Police Department’s ‘Tac Squad’ and STRESS units illustrates the necessities following such a surge in violent crime brought about during a period of massive demographic, cultural, and political change. Rather than the narrative of 'victimhood' that it has become (for one particular member of the so-called 'protected class'), the rapid and perpetual decline of Detroit proves the alternative case: the reality of a once-great city changed forever, riddled with crime and reshaped both culturally and demographically, all in the absence of accountability where politicians and criminals (often one and the same) have come to redefine the culture and reputation of one of America’s great cities — where bad decisions are often glamorized in pop culture or excused by claims of injustice, and where high crime and the ‘Detroit vs Everybody’ mentality have even become a point of pride for many.

Economically, Detroit, once the fifth-largest U. S. city with the highest per-capita GDP in America, today has a population barely larger than that of Sacramento. This outcome is hardly surprising, merely considering the fact that good and productive people generally aim to raise families, and they generally aim to raise them in safe neighborhoods. Detroit is no longer such a place, and it hasn’t been for some time; and the data bear this out through the expressed preferences of the people (who, regardless of race, elect to live elsewhere if they can afford it) and through the recent historical record that has accompanied the destruction of a once-great city: a city suffering decades of industrial decline (in part due to the pressure of unions and the prohibitive costs of doing business in Detroit), fiscal irresponsibility and political corruption (i.e. bribery, patronage, nepotism, misuse of funds, and the mismanagement leading to the City of Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy), ‘white flight’ and a general disinterest in living, working, or doing any business in the city (apart from one small pocket in downtown Detroit called Campus Martius, benefitting from private security), and a city home to crime, corruption, and cultural decadence (exacerbated by drug, gang, and hip-hop culture): a cultural and demographic shift illustrated by the fact that, in 1950, the ‘white’ population constituted approximately 84 percent of Detroit’s total population, whereas in 2025 it constitutes less than 11 percent of the same; for comparison, the black population constituted 9 percent of the population in 1940, 16 percent by 1950, 44 percent by 1970, and 76 percent by 1990, and it constitutes nearly 80 percent of Detroit’s total population today. Meanwhile, with each passing year, Detroit's population continues to shrink, such that all indications point to it eventually becoming a 'mid-sized' city — all of this despite the city's rich history, its once-promising future, and its once-unrivaled industry which once made it one of the powerhouses of the American economy and the so-called Arsenal of Democracy during World War II (1941-1945).

As we have seen, the story of Detroit is a microcosm of the problems ailing so much of not just the major cities of the United States, but virtually the entirety of Western civilization. So far as nothing is done to officially (or openly) acknowledge the infection (as it is 'politically-incorrect' to do so), and so far as nothing is done to treat it, the disease will metastasize to the point that Western civilization will eventually be lost, along with the very ideas and institutions which define 'America' and defend 'American liberty' — ideas and institutions conducive to the protection of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, and ideas and institutions which have flourished on this side of the Atlantic for reasons and factors not reproducible elsewhere. 

As Ronald Reagan put it in his 1964 television speech in support of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, "If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth." The loss of Detroit is, in this case, but one of the major battlegrounds for what is truly a countrywide culture war: a war which will decide the future, and which ideas and institutions will inhabit it.