Growing up, I don’t remember anything I learned in school that I hadn’t already learned—or could have easily learned—from my parents. My mother taught me to read before kindergarten, and I never had to study Strunk and White because she was always correcting my grammar. With my three brothers, we had lively and substantive dinner-table conversations. Whenever I was with either parent, there were always discussions about every academic subject one could imagine, with ethics being one of Dad’s favorite topics. I grew up in a section of Virginia known as the Cradle of Democracy. Three of the first five U.S. presidents, along with a whole host of other patriots, were born and lived within a few miles of my house.
Dad and his three brothers were all in “the War.” Dad hit the beaches on D-Day, led men in the Battle of the Bulge, and, when Germany was defeated, he volunteered for the Pacific. Through the tutelage of my parents and my surroundings, I understood history, citizenship, and the unique promise of America.
When I was nine, my parents took me to Washington, and we visited the Capitol. Descending the steps on the way out, I noticed someone had spit chewing gum on the steps. I couldn’t believe it. Who would desecrate this iconic symbol of democracy? I got on my knees and did my best to remove the stain on our nation’s heritage.
One of my children is a slob. I constantly tell her that order and cleanliness create discipline and character. Our cities should be structured the same way. A city should reflect the republican virtues to which we all aspire: beauty, nobility, order, and self-control.
A city should promote the values we hope to instill in our children. Ask any parent what they deem the most important and meaningful life lesson, and the overwhelming response is moral character. Shouldn’t our cities reflect this sentiment, rather than being cesspools of crime and filth?
Does culture form law, or does law shape culture? The former is certainly true, but bad law can destroy culture. When I was a boy, people didn’t lock their houses, they left their keys in the ignition, and the most dangerous work the county sheriff ever had to do was get Mrs. Nelson’s cat out of the higher branches of the large oak tree in her yard. Bad laws have decimated this culture—decriminalizing bad behavior, introducing an established “woke” religion in primary and higher education, and eliminating the once almost-universal acknowledgement (not to mention practice) of our Judeo-Christian ethics.
As I write this, the D.C. Attorney General is suing to keep the federal government from cleaning up the degenerate and loathsome mess local government “leaders” have made of their city—a city that should be a shining example on a hill, extolling Cincinnatus’ virtues for the world to see and admire. This is leftist lunacy, flashing in neon on the marquee of the Parthenon.
The source of such lunacy is our university system, and the roots of its rot stem from federal involvement in education and the vast sums of money that pour into these “mental asylums” from taxpayers. They are breeding grounds for psychopathy and leftist pedagogy—none of which would exist but for the fact that otherwise worthless, bitter nihilists, totally unemployable in the real world, can find lucrative careers on bucolic, ivied campuses. No one who hasn’t been indoctrinated within this protected bubble thinks murder, rape, theft, carjacking, open-air drug markets and defecating on the street are protected forms of conduct, immune from vigorous prosecution.
The maniacal academics scream “Critical Race Theory,” “Restorative Justice,” and “Intersectionality,” and what they have created is a dystopian nightmare resembling a Mad Max movie. In Washington, virtually all crime is committed by young Black men. Every day on social media there are videos of hundreds of Black teenagers smashing and looting stores. This is all a result of the Left’s soft-on-crime policies and their purposeful efforts to create division and turmoil, not to mention their efforts to destroy the nuclear family, e.g., fatherhood. Have their policies helped any of these kids? My heart bleeds for them, as well as for the many older church-going Black ladies I have given rides home after they babysat my children. I’ve always loved these ladies. They are afraid to walk the streets of their neighborhood. Why should anyone have to live like this? Our constitutional fabric boldly states that government’s most important and fundamental role is to protect life, limb, and property by promoting good order and domestic tranquility.
Will lawlessness and mayhem—not to mention the entitlement that allows kids to commit crimes at will—help them in life? Will they develop good character, be productive, be financially independent, and become good stewards of their communities? It is as though the Left (mostly white liberals) is purposefully trying to destroy the Black community. The truth is they are, but their malevolence extends beyond Black people. They, like Dostoevsky’s Pyotr Verkhovensky, are trying to destroy the entire country. By now, dear reader, you should understand: these lunatic precepts that the Left advocates are not created to make our communities better, physically or spiritually. They are purposeful efforts to destroy societal foundations without any solution as to what occurs after their planned destruction.
Everyone not indoctrinated with leftist pseudo-logic understands that, since the beginning of time, to prevent bad behavior and promote good behavior, there must be severe consequences for bad behavior. It’s simple. The result of tough-on-crime policies is that those who might be tempted to stray from virtue to vice very often choose virtue. Who is helped by allowing street thugs to run wild with lawless abandon? Certainly not the victims. The policy mass-produces thuggery. Misplaced empathy for criminals is not true empathy. The cognitive element of true empathy is thinking beyond one-dimensional emotion to the cascading ripple effects of violent and lawless behavior. Tough laws help victims, but they also help would-be thugs decide not to be thugs.
Parents teach and instill values. History teaches us what is possible—like my childhood, where there was virtually no crime and folks could eat off the sidewalks, they were so clean. The beautiful, orderly, clean, and inspiring city can be a reality, and it costs far less to run than crime-ridden dumps like Washington. Invest the resources to jail criminals and beautify the city, and the culture quickly changes. Respect for property and the tax base rises, schools improve, businesses move in, and civic involvement skyrockets. The Constitution calls this domestic tranquility.
There’s no reason those nice babysitting ladies should not feel safe in their neighborhoods. And it’s absolute lunacy to listen to “burn it all down” leftist fruitcakes who don’t care about you—or about these nice ladies.
