Conservatives have long maintained that when liberal social policies are implemented by organizations and governments, there are inevitable, unforeseen, negative consequences that end up hurting the very people such policies are designed to help.  The definitive example of this principle is LBJ’s Great Society legislation, which has done so much to destroy the concept of family in the black community, just as predicted by New York U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  Moynihan, in his famous report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," noted:

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

What Moynihan didn’t factor into the social equation was the catalytic effect that liberal political activism, particularly the opportunistic racist activism of so-called black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, would have in spreading that disintegration, harming even those black families that had maintained cohesion.  And today, a primarily black community is suffering a very real negative consequence of the most recent social justice project these black “leaders” and sympathetic white liberal and socialist activists took upon themselves.  Fusion.net has posted an article reporting that home values in Ferguson, Missouri have dropped drastically since the demonstrations and rioting that occurred last summer following the police shooting death of Michael Brown.

An article entitled “Ferguson home values are plummeting, and residents are feeling the pain” reports that prior to Brown’s death, the average 2014 selling price of a home was $66,764.  For the last quarter of the same year, that average selling price dropped 46% to $36,168.  And the trend downward is even more dramatic so far in 2015, where the average selling price is now down to $22,951.  Consider the impact such a dramatic reduction in the value of your home would have on your life.

That is a real estate disaster, folks, and it is directly attributable to the fact that so-called black leaders including Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, decided to insert themselves into a tragic but fairly routine black community shooting death and turn it into a national incident by claiming that it was both unjustified and racially motivated.  As we all now know, both of those claims have since been disproved and the police exonerated.  So where are those black leaders and white social activists now that the smoke and violence of rioting have dissipated, and another community is left bearing the expense of their liberal political grandstanding? 

How do you suppose those homeowners in Ferguson who had no part in the demonstrations may feel about social justice at this moment?  Like most Americans, their homes are the bedrock of their personal wealth.  Our home’s value is the key factor in virtually every aspect of our financial lives, where one’s net worth and credit rating are measures applied impersonally, without consideration for the unforeseen consequences of liberal social activism, by the financial institutions that determine what we can or cannot afford to own.

Worse, the destruction caused by these unintended liberal consequences doesn’t stop with homeowners, but extends to every aspect of local government and education, all funded in large part by local property taxes.  During the Ferguson crisis, it was reported that citizens were unhappy with local police for writing too many tickets as a city revenue source.  Well now that the primary revenue source for local government, property taxes, has been cut to less than half of what it had been, how many tickets are the police going to need to write just to keep the doors to the station house open?  What will the school board do – raise taxes?  That’s just what citizens who’ve had their net worth cut to the bone need: a larger tax burden.

There’s an old saying that you should never foul your own nest.  Critics of black rioting have pointed out the truth of that old folk wisdom for years.  Sadly, too many black communities like Ferguson have learned that the hard way.  I suspect that the so-called black leaders and the liberal socialist do-gooders know it quite well.

They just don’t give a damn, because it’s not their nest.