There was a time when cities like San Francisco felt almost like classrooms in perfect balance. In the 1980s, I remember walking through its streets with a sense of peace. It was artistic, vibrant, and humane. The same could be said of many places across Western Europe. London, Paris, and Berlin once held an air of calm confidence, as if society had matured enough to accommodate difference without disorder.
The London of those days was something of a cinematic memory too, softly preserved in films like Melody (1971), where children wandered suburban streets, bound by rules but also by innocence. The city had boundaries, but within them, life seemed open. It was a society that still believed in its center.
But something has changed. Cities that once stood as examples of harmony now feel fractured. Open drug use, homelessness, crime, and a strange sense of lawlessness fill public spaces. Immigration, once celebrated as a symbol of openness, now causes tension in neighborhoods that feel unfamiliar even to their own citizens. Governments speak in compassionate tones, but the streets speak another language.
It’s like a classroom where the teacher has stopped teaching, the students do as they please, and the ideal of freedom has lost its connection to purpose. And in that confusion, some cry out for discipline, not because they are cruel, but because they are afraid. They long for a voice that will restore order.
This is the story of that broken classroom, and why politics across the West is being reshaped by the struggle between compassion and control.
The Fentanyl Crisis
Few things illustrate this unraveling more clearly than the fentanyl epidemic. In cities like San Francisco and Vancouver, the streets have become stages for visible suffering. It’s not uncommon to see people unconscious from overdoses, or using narcotics openly in public spaces. Ambulances arrive not occasionally, but as part of the daily rhythm.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far stronger than heroin or morphine, is incredibly lethal. Just a few milligrams can kill. It began as a tool for pain management in hospitals but now flows into North America through intricate supply chains involving Mexican cartels and Chinese chemical exporters.
It has killed more than 500,000 Americans since 2018, that’s more than the total U.S. combat deaths in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. It’s more than 100 times the death toll of 9/11, and approaches the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic in its deadliest years. In 2023 alone, 73,800 deaths were linked to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. In 2024, that number declined to around 55,100, but the damage remains staggering, claiming more lives in a single year than any modern war or natural disaster in recent American history.
Some have even called it a twenty-first century Opium War in reverse, except this time, it is the West that lies stricken by addiction, and foreign chemical exporters that fuel the trade. What began as a pharmaceutical innovation has become a geopolitical poison, devastating not only individuals, but the very trust that once held communities together.
In response, many governments have embraced harm reduction. These strategies include supervised injection sites, widespread distribution of naloxone (a life-saving overdose antidote), and clean needle programs. The intent is noble: prevent death, build trust, and reduce disease.
But in practice, harm reduction without structure has turned into harm tolerance. In too many cities, the message has shifted from “We will help you recover” to “We will let you die slowly, but more safely.” There is no expectation of sobriety, no clear path to healing, and no protection for the public space. Residents walk past scenes that would once have shocked the conscience, but now barely register.
It is as if the teacher has told the students, “We know you’re in pain, so we’ll let you smoke and drink in class.” But this doesn’t help the students grow; it only confirms their despair.
Immigration Without Integration
The same story plays out in another domain: immigration and social cohesion. Across Western Europe, the promise of diversity has given way to a new kind of tension. The migrant crisis that began in the early 2010s brought millions of refugees and asylum seekers to countries like Germany, Sweden, France, and the UK. Many were fleeing war and persecution. Their need was real, and the West’s response, at least in rhetoric, was generous.
But integration proved far more difficult than arrival. Schools struggled with language barriers. Neighborhoods changed rapidly, sometimes losing any sense of local identity. In cities like London or Berlin, entire districts became cultural enclaves where the host country’s norms were no longer observed. In some places, even basic freedoms, like women walking alone at night or speaking openly about religion, began to erode.
Crime patterns began to reflect this social confusion. London has seen around 50,000 knife-related offenses in recent years, while Berlin reported growing rates of street assaults post-COVID. In Sweden, especially in cities like Malmö and Stockholm, gang-related shootings and bombings have become more frequent. In Paris, low-level violence and public nuisances now accompany what were once simply busy public spaces. These aren’t universal trends, but they are real enough to shift public feeling.
Policy makers, fearing accusations of racism, hesitated to set clear expectations. The result was a loss of trust, not just between communities, but between citizens and their governments. People didn’t object to diversity in principle. They objected to the absence of integration, the disappearance of shared rules, and the refusal to admit that coexistence requires more than good intentions.
It’s not that the classroom had new students. It’s that the teacher no longer insisted on a common language. Without one, noise replaced dialogue, and the room fell apart.
Liberal Governance
At the heart of both the drug crisis and the immigration dilemma lies a deeper failure, not of values, but of courage. Compassion, tolerance, and autonomy are noble ideals. But when they are practiced without clarity, responsibility, or institutional strength, they collapse into chaos.
Many progressive cities spend enormous sums on social programs. They establish sanctuary protections, expand healthcare access, and implement non-punitive approaches to homelessness and addiction. But these policies are often carried out by fragmented systems, with no central coordination. Bureaucracies grow, but results don’t. Residents see billions spent and wonder why their streets still feel unsafe, why their children’s schools are overburdened, why nothing ever seems to change.
The truth is that good governance requires more than good values. It requires structure. Accountability. Moral leadership. Without these, even the best ideals can become destructive. A city cannot function if its compassion leads to dysfunction. A society cannot thrive if it refuses to enforce the conditions that make freedom possible.
We don’t need less compassion. We need the structure and discipline to sustain it.
The Rise of Order Politics
This failure of liberal governance helps explain the rise of figures like Donald Trump. Many critics view him as a threat to democratic norms, a crude populist who plays on fear. But that view often misses the deeper reason for his popularity: he represents a response to the feeling that the world is spinning out of control.
When people see their neighborhoods change beyond recognition, when they watch their cities falter under addiction and dysfunction, when their governments offer only vague reassurances; they begin to crave clarity. They want someone who says what others won’t. Someone who appears unafraid to confront the mess.
Trump speaks in absolutes. He promises order. He shouts where others whisper. For many, that feels like a relief, not because they agree with everything he says, but because he seems to be fighting back against the chaos they see around them.
Leaders like him arise not in healthy societies, but in frightened ones. He is not the cause of the disorder; he is a product of it. And he thrives as long as the mainstream remains unable to restore meaning and discipline without abandoning compassion.
The Middle Path Between Freedom and Order
Is there a better way? There has to be. History offers examples. Portugal, faced with a devastating heroin crisis, decriminalized drug use but paired it with aggressive treatment mandates and a strong public health system. Singapore combines strict law enforcement with social support and universal housing. Germany, after the refugee crisis, began requiring cultural orientation and language programs as part of the integration process.
These are not perfect models, but they show what is possible: combining care with clarity, freedom with responsibility. A society that offers help must also expect participation. A city that welcomes must also teach and require. A policy that prevents death must also support life.
In the classroom, this means bringing the teacher back, not as a tyrant, but as a guide. Someone who holds space, who protects the weak, who demands respect, and who insists that every student matters too much to be abandoned to their habits.
Reclaiming the Public Square
The metaphor of the classroom is not a rhetorical device. It is a lens through which we can understand our moment. Our societies are filled with potential, with people of every background and story, with real human beauty. But when no one is willing to say, “This is how we live together,” that beauty disintegrates.
We do not need to reject compassion or diversity or personal freedom. We need to place them in a structure that allows them to flourish. That structure requires leadership, not just at the top, but throughout civil society. Parents, teachers, neighbors, judges, social workers, and elected officials must find the courage to speak again, not just kindly, but firmly.
Because a classroom without a teacher is not freedom. It’s failure. And if we don’t restore order, not by domination, but by direction, we will keep mistaking collapse for progress.
The choice is ours. Not between cruelty and kindness, but between chaos and care with discipline. Between slogans and service. Between losing the classroom, or saving it.
Image by Preben Gammelmark
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