Ignore rising crime, pay a severe ballot-box price

Dems who ignore rising crime will pay a severe ballot-box price

Rich Lowery, New York Post

On the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, dozens of gunshots rang out in the middle of the day at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, forcing reporters and bystanders to duck and cover.

The symbolism was unmistakable — the yearlong bout of protest after Floyd’s killing has coincided with a surge of urban crime that has made gunplay dismayingly common.

Indeed, the intersection where Floyd was killed, now a memorial blocked to vehicular traffic, has become a watchword for mayhem.

The issue of public safety may be about to play its most significant role in our politics since the mid-1990s, the beginning of a decades-long decline in crime that steadily eroded its political salience.

Former President Donald Trump tried to make law and order a defining issue in 2020, but the rioting he so forcefully denounced was, in most places, too transitory to become an overwhelming issue. 

Now, more than a year into a serious crime wave, Democrats are fooling themselves if they think they won’t be blamed for rising violence in Democratic-run cities and states.

Overall, murder increased by more than 25 percent in the United States last year, the biggest jump in 60 years. Surely the dislocations of the pandemic have been a factor, but it’s also obvious that anti-police agitation has put the cops on their back feet. Exhibit A is Minneapolis.

In the fevered aftermath of the Floyd killing, the City Council pledged to do away with the police department, among the most outlandishly unachievable and self-destructive promises ever made by an elected body. Of course, it couldn’t follow through on it, any more than it could have followed through on a promise to eliminate traffic lights or municipal snow removal.

Still, cops have fled the force, while crime has soared. The impeccably progressive mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who desperately wanted to ingratiate himself at a tribunal-like rally last summer but, to his credit, wouldn’t commit to defunding the police, now occasionally sounds like he’s channeling Rudy Giuliani circa 1993.

Another dyed-in-the-wool progressive, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, faced with ongoing unrest that once was blamed on Trump, has called for the city’s residents to “take the city back” and for unmasking, arresting and prosecuting rioters.

Los Angeles cut its police budget by 8 percent in the wake of the Floyd protests and now is adding it right back. In South Los Angeles, the LAPD is increasing patrols and vehicle stops to search for guns and gang members.

Irving Kristol famously said that a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. If progressive politicians who are now sounding friendlier to the police haven’t been mugged, they at least have been alarmed by the sound of approaching gunfire.

The turnabout isn’t universal. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked the other day whether there is a crime problem. Sounding as evasive as when she discusses the border, Psaki would only say there is a “guns problem.” This was a reference to the completely unconvincing argument that increased gun sales have led to the spike in crime, when surges in gun sales since the mid-1990s never before led to higher crime.

The problem that Democrats have is that they have accepted — and celebrated the people making — a comprehensive case against the police as systematically racist.

This argument doesn’t naturally allow for nuance. In fact, it logically entails calling for fewer cops and less police funding, an agenda that will be hard to sell to most people in the best of circumstances but is toxic in an environment of rising crime.

Black Lives Matter has already been losing support in the polls, while trust in the police has been rising. Things would have to get much worse for crime to become as central an issue as it was in the 1970s. But Democrats who aren’t alarmed that reporters are dodging bullets at the George Floyd memorial are tempting political fate.

Marxist socialism and fascism-nationalist socialism are incompatible with military service

 Marxist socialism and fascism-nationalist socialism are incompatible with military service

All,

Marxist socialism and fascism-nationalist socialism are evil incarnate.

 

The 20th-century adherents of Marxist socialism and fascism-nationalist socialism killed more innocents than all previous wars of humanity combined. 

When the rest of the civilized world had abolished enslavement, 20th-century adherents of Marxist socialism and fascist-nationalist socialism revived it on an unprecedented scale.

20th-century Marxist socialism and fascist-nationalist socialism without a doubt have visited upon this planet more suffering and murdering and threw more people into abject poverty than any other religion or ideology in all recorded history.

To support or even tolerate Marxist socialist or fascist-nationalist socialist beliefs is to tacitly if not overtly support the holocaust, genocide, and organized war crimes carried out on a vast scale.

For those in a position of leadership, not to speak out against Marxist socialism and fascist-nationalist socialism is a dereliction of duty and dishonors hundreds of thousands of Americans in uniform who gave their lives defeating these oppressive, sadistic, and cruel belief systems. 

For anyone wearing the uniform, to not stand against Marxist and fascist-nationalist socialism is not just morally and ethically bankrupt, it is a violation of their oath of office.

They are a disgrace, unfit, and should be dismissed from the service.

Michael M. Walker

Col. USMC (Ret.)

Systemic Racism, Chicago-Style

Systemic Racism, Chicago-Style

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, American Greatness

The country, even the larger world, has heard a lot about “systemic racism” in America lately. It seems to be the flavor of the year and goes on and on, unabated. The White House preaches it and Biden’s U.N. ambassador tells us, “Racism was and continues to be a daily challenge wherever we are. And for millions, it’s more than a challenge. It’s deadly.”

Deadly, indeed!

According to its own tourist literature, Chicago, on Lake Michigan in Illinois, is among the largest cities in the United States. Famed for its bold architecture and deep-dish pizza, it has a skyline punctuated by skyscrapers such as the iconic John Hancock Center, 1,451-foot Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) and the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower. The city is also renowned for its museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago with its noted Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. 

The “Windy City” has a black population of just over 30 percent and is deadly dangerous. Chicago and Illinois both have some of the strongest gun control laws in the country, with more on the way—do you think it’s possible that the criminals might not be obeying those laws?

Well, let’s take an indicative deep dive and look closely into one of America’s largest cities, the city made famous by poet Carl Sandberg, who called it, “a city of broad shoulders . . . and hog butcher of the world.” Apparently, that’s not all that gets butchered in Chicago, these days. 

The facts are most illuminating, if not staggering.

In Chicago, there were 2,240 shootings and 440 homicides from January through July 2020. The numbers are way up again in 2021. Back in 2015, Chicago’s homicide rate had already risen to 18.6 per 100,000. By 2016, Chicago had recorded more homicides and shooting victims than New York City and Los Angeles combined. Chicago’s biggest criminal justice challenges have changed little over the last 50 years, and statistically reside with homicide, armed robbery, gang violence, and aggravated battery. Chicago is considered one of the most gang-infested cities in the United States, with an estimated population of over 100,000 active members from nearly 60 different factions. Gang warfare and retaliation are quite common in Chicago. It is estimated that gangs are responsible for 60 percent of the homicides in Chicago.

One thing stands out—almost every shooter and homicide victim (97.7 percent) are black. But Black Lives Matter and Chicago’s Democratic politicians continue to blame “police and systemic racism.”

Yet:

The mayor is black.

The superintendent of police is black.

The Cook County state’s attorney is black.

The chief judge of Cook County circuit courts is black.

The Illinois attorney general is black.

The fire department commissioner is black.

The Cook County board president is black.

The state senate majority leader is black.

The lieutenant governor is black.

The secretary of state is black.

The clerk of the circuit court of Cook County is black.

The Cook County clerk is black.

The city treasurer is black.

The Chicago Police Board president is black.

The Chicago Transit Authority president is black.

The CEO of Chicago public schools is black.

The commissioner of the Department of Water Management is black.

Forty percent of the City Council belongs to the black caucus. Nine aldermen are socialists.

Their average pay is $122,304 annually each, plus $122,000 per year in expenses. Their pension for life is 80 percent of final pay. 

There are zero Republicans on the Chicago City Council.

William Hale Thompson was the last Republican mayor of Chicago long ago, in 1931.

For 89 years, Democrats have completely controlled the mayor’s office.

The fiscal deficit in Chicago is more than $838.2 million and counting. 

Can someone please explain how it’s possible for Republicans—Donald Trump in particular, or white people in general—to be responsible for Chicago’s horrendously dismal and unsafe conditions?

Truthfully, there can’t be a rational explanation because Chicago’s plague of urban warfare itself isn’t logical; it’s nothing less than horrifically cruel and self-destructive. 

A recent University of Chicago Crime Lab study was able to quantify how much of the city’s gunfire victimizes residents of struggling neighborhoods: Five South and Westside communities with nine percent of Chicago’s population (Austin, Englewood, New City, West Englewood, and Greater Grand Crossing) accounted for half the city’s increase in homicides. African American men ages 15-34 make up over 70 percent of the city’s total homicide victims, while accounting for just 4 percent of the city’s population. Almost 40 percent of victims had prior violent crime arrests.

Needless to say, Chicago is not working, and the statistics show it. It only gets worse year by year. It is certainly not because of any systemic racism, unless you wanted to argue that Chicago’s Democratic Party black elite officialdom doesn’t give a damn about Chicago’s black population. 

The long-term solution lies in substantial and deep cultural change: shoring up the mediating structures in society, from the family (two parents, with the father at home) to the church, to charter schools and school choice to robust civic associations. This effort takes decades to yield results but is nonetheless imperative.

The short-term answer may be to help and encourage the movement of the endangered black male population in the affected age group—from Chicago to other locations. By moving to smaller towns, to farms, and to states, like Vermont or the Dakotas, with much lower homicide rates—their lives would be spared.

Perhaps, it is time to try something else besides Chicago’s status quo—because yes, black lives do matter, even in Chicago.

Are Americans becoming Sovietized?

Are Americans becoming Sovietized?

Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review

What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?

Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin's lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?

Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism. Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.

1. There was no escape from ideological indoctrination — anywhere. A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much on merit, expertise or past achievement. What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.

Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion. Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.

2. The Soviets fused their press with the government. Pravda, or "Truth," was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned lies. Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Communist Party partners.

In 2017, a Harvard study found that over 90% of the major TV news networks' coverage of the Trump administration's first 100 days was negative.

3. The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.

Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments. The U.S. Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.

CNN recently alleged that the Biden administration's Department of Homeland Security is considering partnering with private surveillance firms to get around government prohibitions on scrutinizing Americans' online activity.

4. The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.

Currently, cash-strapped universities nationwide are hiring thousands of diversity, equity and inclusion staffers and administrators. Their chief task is to scan the admissions, hiring, curriculum and administration at universities. Like good commissars, our diversity czars oversee compliance with the official narrative that a flawed America must confess, apologize for and renounce its evil foundations.

5. The Soviet Union was run by a pampered elite, exempt from the ramifications of their own radical ideologies.

Now, woke Silicon Valley billionaires talk socialistically but live royally. Coke and Delta Airlines CEOs who hector Americans about their illiberality make millions of dollars a year.

What unites current woke activists such as Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James Mark Zuckerberg and the Obamas are their huge estates and their multimillion-dollar wealth. Just as the select few of the old Soviet nomenklatura had their Black Sea dachas, America's loudest top-down revolutionaries prefer living in Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills, Montecito and Malibu.

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6. The Soviets mastered Trotskyization, or the rewriting and airbrushing away of history to fabricate present reality.

Are Americans any different when they indulge in a frenzy of name-changing, statue-toppling, monument-defacing, book-banning and cancel-culturing?

7. The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.

Since when did Americans encourage co-workers to turn in others for an ill-considered word in a private conversation? Why do thousands now scour the internet to find any past incorrect expression of a rival? Why are there now new thought criminals supposedly guilty of climate racism, immigration racism or vaccination racism?

8. Soviet prosecutors and courts were weaponized according to ideology.

In America, where and for what reason you riot determines whether you face any legal consequences. Politically correct sanctuary cities defy the law with impunity. Jury members are terrified of being doxxed and hunted down for an incorrect verdict. The CIA and FBI are becoming as ideological as the old KGB.

9. The Soviets doled out prizes on the basis of correct Soviet thought.

In modern America, the Pulitzer Prizes and the Emmys, Grammys, Tonys and Oscars don't necessarily reflect the year's best work, but often the most politically correct work from the most woke.

10. The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing freedom. Instead, they boasted that they were advocates for equity, champions of the underclass, enemies of privilege — and therefore could terminate anyone or anything they pleased.

Our wokists are similarly defending their thought-control efforts, forced re-education sessions, scripted confessionals, mandatory apologies and cancel culture on the pretense that we need long-overdue "fundamental transformation."

So if they destroy people in the name of equity, their nihilism is justified.