Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a good Samaritan in Portland, Oregon, confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods.

More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage—of the thieves!

They pouted. They screamed. They resisted. How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished.

The criminals entertained no fear of any consequences for walking out with bags of things that were not theirs. They had no care that mainstreaming their habits would undermine the entire fabric of society.

What is common to the pandemic of smash-and-grab, carjacking, fighting on airliners while in flight, and deadly Saturday night shoot-outs is this same apparent assurance there will be no consequences.

That expectation of exemption is why the Antifa thugs in Atlanta were so bold in their latest violent attacks on the police.

And why not, after the 120 days of rioting, looting, arson, and assault in the summer of 2020, which resulted in few Antifa indictments, fewer convictions, and almost no imprisonments?

The “broken windows” theory of policing in the 1990s and 2000s showed how the failure to punish even minor infractions soon leads to escalation to more violent crimes.

The homeless take for granted that ancient rules forbidding urination, defecation, fornication, and injection on the sidewalks do not apply to them. Is it any wonder that they increasingly are not victims of circumstance but victimizers of innocent passersby?

Yet deterrence is not just eroded from the bottom up, but also from the top down—and by an elite who assume it will never be subject to the chaos it has wrought.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe admittedly lied on four occasions to federal investigators, apparently with the prescient expectation he would never be prosecuted.

The same hubris was true of former CIA Director John Brennan, who admittedly lied under oath to Congress—twice—with absolute impunity.

The former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, not only lied under oath to Congress, but crowed that he gave the “least untruthful” answer. He too faced zero consequences.

Could the FBI and the CIA recover their tarnished reputations if their directors knew in advance they would go to jail for lying under federal oath?

Sometimes the problem is not just the absence of sure punishment for criminal behavior, but the asymmetry of penalties.

Why are some violent criminals released from custody the very day they punch, club, or shoot innocents, while others committing lesser offenses are not?

Nations are no different from people. Without expectation of a severe reaction to their provocations, they only escalate their aggression.

Why are athletes who choose not to be vaccinated barred from competing in the United States, while 6 million to 7 million illegal entrants were waved in without passports, vaccinations, or COVID-19 tests?

And once those millions south of the border saw a few thousand illegally cross with impunity shortly after President Biden was inaugurated, then they followed en masse.

Why does the Mexican government shrug when the United States asks it not to greenlight illegal immigration?

Why does Mexico City tolerate factories inside Mexico producing lethal fentanyl pills for export northward that kill over 100,000 Americans a year?

What sort of deterrence would stop millions from illegally entering the United States, or Mexican-manufactured fentanyl from killing more Americans in the last decade than all the dead in all our wars since World War II?

Should the United States tax the $60 billion in remittances sent back yearly to Mexico, mostly by those who are here illegally and so often subsidized by our own state and federal entitlements?

Should America declare cartels international terrorists, extradite them, and bar all their accomplices and abettors from the global banking system?

China knowingly sends Mexico the raw ingredients of fentanyl, believing it is a win-win strategy of enormous profits and lots of deaths of America’s youth.

What would deter China from its nonchalant aggression? Still more concessions? More ignoring the Wuhan origins of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Or would the expulsion of 350,000 Chinese students from American universities stop their fentanyl exporting? Or prohibiting Chinese companies with ties to the communist government from buying American farmland?

Apparently, the more technologically sophisticated and affluent Americans became, the more their elites believed they could change ancient human nature that is fixed and predictable across time and space.

They redefined criminality as either a lifestyle choice or reimaged the criminal as one with legitimate grievances against the society he subverts.

The more the Biden administration ignores those harming us abroad, the more they interpret it as American weakness, if not decadence to be further exploited.

The result is the predictably dangerous present.

When our state and federal governments allow criminals and foreign nations to injure with impunity their own law-abiding citizens, is it any wonder the civilized world we once knew has vanished—replaced by the Hobbesian rule of the wild?

When will this change?

Unfortunately, not until six years after we pass term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court, if we are smart enough to do it.

Pap

6 year terms for SCOUTS....I think not

:-)Rocky

As of this moment, the Sinaloa Mexican cartel is splintered into factions now that El Chapo (Joaquin Guzman) is rotting in prison and one of his sons is soon to follow.

These factions are in a power struggle and previously-defunct cartels are rising again and contributing to the conflict. This is what we saw with the four Americans that got tangled up just across the border from Brownsville TX.

Since they're so splintered and warring against each other, they're basically street gangs.

The one faction to keep an eye on is the CJNG cartel (formerly known as Los Mata Zetas, or "The Zetas"). They are one of the few splinter factions that are gaining ground. They're also quite a bit more violent up front and their leader El Mencho (Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes) is the most-wanted in Mexico and the US.

Their MO is to roll into a (currently Mexican) town, shoot up the police station, kill any authority gang figures, and take ownership of that territory. If they do this north of the border, they'll likely get the "terrorist" stamp and the fun that comes with it.

Regarding term limits on SCOTUS, I think perhaps we should pause on that thought while we have a favorable court.

Agreed !!

Pappy,
WOW!!! What you said.

Wayne

Pappy,

Our Justice Department is only focused on Donald Trump. Disgraceful politicization of the FBI, DOJ, and DA's. What were once the great symbols of Justice and fairness in the world are now Gestapo style enforcers.

The border is a sieve that no one knows what is crossing it and killing our society with China supplied Fentanyl.

Our State Gov's are destroying our society with Cannabis laced products so our neighbors and their kids cannot think for themselves any more.

As my Mother would say 'The World's Gone Mad'!

Wake up America! Like it or not Donald Trump is the answer. Why else are they so rooted in his destruction?

Tom Flynn

Very true Tom. Look at what Trump accomplished even with all of the false and bogus accusations, plus illegal lawsuits.

Imagine what he could have done without all of that fakeness and had just a little cooperation? I believe the real reason the left went after him, is that Trump didn't owe anything to any politician, so they had nothing to bargin with or hold over his head. So they made up stuff.

Pappy

it is about power and money. McConnell and schmuck shumer are the same guy in a different suit.

You guys need to watch this, prolly 20 years ago. and quite prophetic. The cat is a genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso

thanks to Paul Ryan...he really only had 2 years

:-)Rocky