Commentary Our streets are now so unsafe that it might be helpful to re-watch Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” films. They can remind us of an earlier period in the 1960s and 1970s when crime was widespread, liberal judges were putting criminals back on the streets, and the entire system was anti-cop and pro-criminal. In the middle of a wave of violence that left everyday Americans feeling both threatened and vulnerable, along came a series of movies which captured the desire for law and order. The first and most famous of these was the 1971 “Dirty Harry” starring Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan of San Francisco. The film was so powerful and so well received that it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.” At the end of the film, the American people watched the violent but effective Inspector Callahan throw …
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