Victor Davis Hanson
In short, if Alvin Bragg or Letitia James or Fani Willis were to forsake lawfare and the publicity it earns, and instead treat the criminals in their big city with steep bail, speedy trials, and stiff sentences upon conviction, we know calm would return to urban America.
We know that truth because such a renaissance occurred in the 1990s when the power of the law returned and even the rock-thrower who broke windows, and the squeegee jaywalker who harassed motorists into forking over tips for his bad windshield cleaning, faced big fines and some jail time. The killer thought that if New York stooped to arrest a window-breaker, then it would surely go after the manslayer.
Just as lawlessness begets chaos, and a law unenforced becomes all laws unenforced, so too a law that has teeth spreads lawfulness, gaining respect from the lawful and earning fear from the lawless. And soon then safety, security, and happiness return.
Almost any current pathology is due to timidity and equivocation when simple rules and customs needed to be reenergized and revived.
Take transgenderism. What if our society encouraged a transgendered sports category, a third league between male and female? That is, a coach, a principal, a college president, a mayor, or a governor might simply have said, “After 60 years of seeking parity between women’s and men’s sports, we are not going to allow biological males to wreck six decades of hard work, much less participate in contact sports where they might injure smaller and less strong female athletes.”
He would be canonized and begin a movement where reality returns and the rule of the absurd ends. Transgenderism would return to its status of the pre-hysterical 2010s when gender dysphoria was treated sympathetically as a rare disjunction between sex at birth and one’s natural affinity with the attributes of the opposite sex. In other words, we would go back to a world where transgenderism/trans-sexualism/gender dysphoria was an identifiable malady, but one affecting about .01 percent of the population, not a fetish of 10-30 percent of elite campus youth.
And our open border? Is it not yet another example of the destruction of the rule of law and the ensuing suicide of Western civilization?
In November 2020, the border was secure. Illegal aliens had been deterred by Trump’s resumption of building the wall, fear of deportation, a war on the cartels, and ultimata to Mexico to cease its own efforts to destroy its own northern border. We relearned the truth of Voltaire’s admonition—il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres—or Napoleon’s reported restoration of law and street order through “a whiff of grapeshot.”
Translated, that means if a new administration in its first 30 days began building a vast new wall, stopped catch-and-release, ended refugee status applicable inside the United States, and deported as a start 20,000 recently arrived illegal aliens, then would not the illegal immigrant come in fewer numbers, with legality, and more respect for his soon to be adopted homeland?
Would ex-admirals and retired generals become more circumspect about smearing their commander-in-chief as a “Nazi,” a “Mussolini,” and a “liar,” if Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (i.e., “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”) was just enforced one time (applicable to retired and serving officers as well)? If the offenders were court-marshaled, then would we have a less weaponized military and fewer megaphonic officers?
The post <span class="ultra-flag"><i class="fas fa-lock"></i>VDH Ultra</span>Civilizational Collapse Follows When Laws and Consequences Mean Nothing: Part Two appeared first on VDH’s Blade of Perseus.