John Hinderaker asks in a plaintive tone: Is Crime Still Illegal?
All of these descriptions are somewhat sanitized. We have seen the videos: gangs of twenty or more criminals will descend on a store, often blocking the street in front of the store with their vehicles, and rampage through the establishment stealing whatever relatively high-volume items they can get their hands on.
Sometimes, of course, theft is carried out by smaller groups of shoplifters or by individuals, who simply load up a shopping cart and walk out of the store without paying. Very few of these stolen goods are intended for consumption by the thief. Rather, they are sold online. Organized crime is a highly profitable business.
Of course, theft has always been with us. See the 8th Commandment. But why is organized theft at the present level suddenly a problem? I think it is mostly due to post-George Floyd cowardice. Criminals of all sorts have been emboldened by irrational attacks on law enforcement and a perverse sense that crime constitutes a sort of retributive justice. When elected district attorneys proudly announce that they do not intend to prosecute criminals, and when the State of California essentially legalizes shoplifting, what do they think is going to happen? Obviously, theft will skyrocket.
The problem goes beyond the loss of effective enforcement and any sense of “retributive justice.” Time was, any individual American could easily have told you that theft and many other illegal acts are simply wrong. They’re evil. They violate the rights that inhere in individuals and legitimate businesses. We don’t need to ask the opinion of the law; God has already given us The Law on those things.
But that once-common moral grounding is getting to be ever less common. Many parents never bother to impress it on their children. The schools have no room for it; it’s “exclusionary” if not “racist.” The entertainment media’s glorification of antiheroes and bad-boy protagonists continues the moral numbing process.
If you sense the hand of the transnational-progressive Left behind this, you’re not alone.
Today, J. B. Shurk speaks to the ongoing paradigmatic change in perspectives. Concerning the good-versus-evil dichotomy, he says this:
Not long ago, it was common for conservatives to see the Marxist left as foolishly mistaken — a collection of young and inexperienced troublemakers who would eventually “snap out” of their common delusions once forced to confront reality.
Now people understand that the left’s real mission is to reject reality. Castrating boys so that they can pretend to be girls is not “healthy.” Perpetuating racism as social policy is not “justice.” Imposing a “woke” State religion over personal conscience is not “moral.” Aiding and abetting child sex–trafficking and drug-smuggling at our borders is not “compassionate.” Stealing property is not “equitable.” Just as with Leninism and Maoism before, today’s leftism is evil.
The destruction of the moral norms upon which Christian-Enlightenment civilization was built is a systematic undertaking. The disappearance of those norms will mean the disappearance of the civilization founded upon them. Soon, individual decisions on matters of right and wrong will be unpredictable by disinterested parties.
Regard the following cartoon:
Ponder the message behind the obvious one. In ten or twenty years’ time, would the therapist ask for the prescription slip back…or grope for his “samples” and jam a a few down his patient’s throat?
Resist. And pray.
1 comment
I would ask of the therapist, “Have you ever taken the drugs you prescribe for any length of time?” If not, no thanks.
Evil Franklin