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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Keeping up with the Vandals

Victor Davis Hansen paints a bleak picture of the breakdown of civilization in California, as petty thieves steal everything not bolted down -- and much that is, such as copper wire in street lights. The consequences are as predictable as the sunrise:

The immediate reaction of the victimized in rural central California is predictable and yet quite strange. As in 5th-century North Africa, farmers feel that civilization is vanishing and they are on their own. The “authorities” of an insolvent state, like petty Roman bureaucrats, are too busy releasing criminals from overcrowded jails to want any more. The stories of cyclical releases are horrific: Criminals are not arrested and let go just twice a year, but five and six and ten times. Sometimes we read of the surreal, like this week’s story in my local Selma Enterprise of one criminal’s 36 arrests and releases — and these are only for the crimes we know he committed and was caught for...

Indeed, farmers out here are beginning to feel targeted, not protected, by law enforcement. In the new pay-as-you-go state, shrouded in politically correct bureaucratese, Californians have developed a keen sense of cynicism. The scores of Highway Patrol cars that now dot our freeways are looking for the middle class — the minor, income-producing infractions of the generally law-abiding — inasmuch as in comparison the felonies of the underclass are lose–lose propositions.

If I were to use a cellphone while driving and get caught, the state might make an easy $170 for five minutes’ work. If the same officer were to arrest the dumper who threw a dishwasher or refrigerator into the local pond among the fish and ducks, the arrest and detention would be costly and ultimately fruitless, providing neither revenue from a non-paying suspect nor deterrence against future environmental sacrilege. We need middle-class misdemeanors to pay for the felonies of the underclass.


I sympathize with the predicament in which law enforcement agencies find themselves; they are as much victims of the liberal statism as everyone else. There is a solution, of course -- if the people of the state have the courage to implement it: public humiliation (the stocks) works wonders to curb casual crime. For those who don't get the message, erecting a gallows in the public square will focus their sub-standard minds wonderfully, especially after it's been used a few times.

Civilization, put simply, is nothing more than a system of actions and consequences. In California, the leftist simpletons have effectively removed the consequences for unacceptable actions by inviting the citizens of a neighboring country to an ad hoc invasion of their home. The result is ever-increasing chaos.

Go read the entire article and witness the consequences when feel-good liberal idiocy is employed as a substitute for good government.

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Hat-tip to Rusty C.

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