Physically beginning a project makes it nearly impossible to stop

Evidence

Whatever the motivation that had impelled him to take the risk of starting to transform the Taylor Estate into a park while the courts had still seemed likely to rule that it was not a park—a fearless determination to do what he knew was right regardless of the consequences, a blind faith in Smith’s ability to rescue him from consequences, a desperation to see at last the beginning of the realization of at least one of his dreams, or, perhaps, an insight, the insight of a political genius, that physical development would help rather than hurt his cause—the risk had been magnificently justified. And he had understood the significance of that justification. Once you did something physically, it was very hard for even a judge to undo it. If judges, who had to submit themselves to the decision of the electorate only infrequently, were thus hogtied by the physical beginning of a project, how much more so would be public officials who had to stand for re-election year by year? If he had needed a gift from August Heckscher to make victory certain, what did that prove? Only that once you physically began a project, there would always be some way found of obtaining the money to complete it. “Once you sink that first stake,” he would often say, “they’ll never make you pull it up.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 961

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that physical fait accompli outmaneuvers legal and political opposition — and that judges are more hogtied than politicians — is a genuinely dense insight about power that resists summary.
• XREF: connects to: Beginning physical construction on a project makes authorities unable to stop it — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 961; Bureaucratic inertia makes officials extremely reluctant to stop started projects — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 817

Broader Connections

• Beginning physical construction on a project makes authorities unable to stop it #expands (0.90) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 961
• Bureaucratic inertia makes officials extremely reluctant to stop started projects #expands (0.85) — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 817