Get Off My Highway
Those who know me, and regular readers should after all these years, know that I have an indelible spirit when it comes to my love and belief in America. While people from both sides of the political spectrum bemoan the downfall of our way of life or “our Democracy,” I laugh and shrug it off. I tell them “This is America, the greatest country ever invented. We will adjust and we will endure.” Recently I even flinched.
It is easy to question where we are heading with many of our society’s developments. The significant disregard for property rights is evidenced by the explosion of brazen theft attacks on our retailers. Likewise, the explosion of squatters believing they can occupy someone’s home without their consent. The worst part of this is the near-total emasculation of our policing authority with the demonstrative endorsement of many elected officials supposedly in the position to stop such acts.
There are people living on our streets in mass numbers. Our elected officials tell us they are working on the problem – the one they don’t understand. The one they think is a housing problem and not a drug and/or mental illness problem. The more billions they spend the worse it gets.
Our President decides to add more people to the housing issue by allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter the country and soak up municipal resources meant for services to maintain basic quality of life issues for the tax paying residents.
We now have people invading residential communities to protest in front of elected officials’ homes. This is with callous disregard for their neighbors who deserve quiet in their community. Yet our police refuse to remove the interlopers with some perverse idea this is a first amendment right. You have the right to protest at city hall, but not at someone’s residence with threats to family members and neighbors.
The special case of us going down a rat hole is illegal aliens attacking NYPD on camera and then let out on bail. Read that again slowly. Illegal.. Aliens.. attacked.. New York police officers… and were let out… with .. no.. BAIL. One might think we had gone bat ____ crazy.
What put me over the edge though were the recent protests. People have the protected right to protest. And the fact these protests are being done by raging anti-Semitic jerks has zero to do with my problem. The problem is where they are conducting these protests — namely at airport entrances, on highways, etc. These protests are blatantly illegal, and cops are just standing and staring. They should be pulling up with buses and paddy wagons and announcing the protestors have three minutes to leave or they will be escorted off to jail.
I was sitting at lunch reading and it hit me. Have we just lost it? Are we fried? I became emotionally overwhelmed. There are three things you don’t mess with for me. My family, my country, and my people (Jews). I am a person who cannot sing God Bless America without tearing up. Have these people so destroyed my country and everything that is right about it for their perverse idea that something is so wrong about it we need to turn it upside down?
I needed a therapy session. Not the kind you think. And there are few people in this country that understand the kind of challenge it takes to calm a public policy expert like me.
I had that discussion. It was very emotional. He (yes, it was a he) pointed out that he sees some signs people have seen the “light” as to our very deep dive. He pointed out that in the past we have righted the ship when people have said “enough is enough.” He stated while others sit on the sidelines, I, at least, am engaged and attempting to counter the ill behavior. He calmed me.
There are some signs of sanity setting in. The President of Columbia University had over a hundred protesters arrested and removed from her campus. Google fired 28 employees for disrupting company operations with their protests. The black, female mayor of Philadelphia has decided enough is enough and is working to reduce crime. Her only impediment is the clueless, Leftist DA Larry Krasner. And last, we have an excellent chance this fall to rid ourselves of the disease that is George Gascon, replacing him with Nathan Hochman to restore law and order in Los Angeles County.
As a somewhat aside, the protests on college campuses have received a large force of support from the Left expressing their civil rights. Like they conflate legal and illegal immigrants they are conflating this issue. No one has civil right to speak out and protest on private property. They skip right over that essential point to further their misguided goals.
We need to rise up and turn around some of these ridiculous things we have allowed to happen. A perfect example is the bail system. The bail system is not unfair to poor people. It is unfair to poor people who commit CRIMES. If poor people don’t want to be treated unfairly, they shouldn’t commit a crime. It is a simple concept. We need to stop putting people in positions of power that believe poor people commit crimes because they are poor. They commit crimes because they lost their clarity of what is right and wrong.
Folks, we need to turn this around. If we cannot arrest people who decide to stop traffic on a public highway then something is truly, truly wrong. Arrest them and lock them up. They will stop it. If you don’t, they will continue doing it. Simple concept. And it is the difference between whether or not we are going to save America.
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This article appeared in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.