A great and prosperous society cannot last without a strong moral underpinning. What happens when that moral scaffolding collapses?
We have seen repeatedly what happens when policing breaks down. The Los Angeles riots, the George Floyd mayhem, and the recent campus violence are all examples of what happens when policing either cannot keep up with violent activity or policing is intentionally dialed-back for ideological reasons. Today’s news included that most of the Columbia University felons had their charges dropped by the same man, Alvin Bragg, who cannot make two sentences without mentioning “getting” Donald Trump.
Let’s assume—even incorrectly—that man’s default propensity is to steal or otherwise do things that we would describe as “illegal” or “wrong” if it advances his interests. So why would he not do these things? There can be two types of preventative reasons, one internal, the other external. The internal is moral: robbing, killing, lying, etc. are all wrong because of a moral system that defines them as such. Even if a person has the possibility of doing one of these prohibited activities and getting away with it, he won’t do it because of belief in a moral system or fear of God. Internal brakes for immoral actions are independent of the external considerations: no one else gets hurt, I won’t get caught, and ultimately it helps me. Of course, humans, even very moral ones, are not perfect, and in Judaism, that is one of the reasons why we have Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, every year. Even a person with a solid moral gyroscope can fall down.
But what of external preventative drivers? Police, jail, CCTV, embarrassment—people who may not believe that there is a God or that He cares how we act may be prevented from doing wrong as long as there is a possible downside to it. Do you remember the absolute shame for those rich families caught up in Operation Varsity Blues, in which those caught paid money to get their kids into top colleges? Some went to jail, while others simply had their names smeared day in and day out. As most people fear getting caught, even in a morally decadent society there are drivers for not breaking the law or doing something that would be considered wrong.
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But in modern America and more generally in the West, we have two phenomena coming together that are tearing at the seams of our societies. One is a clear weakening of religious fealty. I don’t know how many times I have seen in the comments to my article that John Adams said that the US Constitution was meant for a “moral and religious people”. Each Pew study and kind of just looking around show that the US is less and less of a religious society. Just getting students to say the Pledge with “one nation, under God…” can lead to lawsuits. So internal controls are weakened when people do not believe in God or a moral system that defines things like stealing, killing, lying, etc. as either wrong or bad. Now throw in a clear weakening of the external features like policing and no-bail DAs. The result is what we see so often: smash-and-grab, even with CCTV cameras everywhere; people knifed, carjacked, or pushed in front of trains. It used to be understood that one cannot enter a country illegally. Someone doing so would minimally expect to be ejected and might fear incarceration or worse. Not today. Millions have entered the US illegally because they rightly assume that there are no serious consequences for doing so. And the upside is a job and money. The same is true for theft at major stores, as the stores would rather fire dedicated employees who fight the thieves, the police do not act against the shoplifters, and ultimately the DA will not bring charges. So we have a morally decaying society whose external enforcers have been intentionally blunted.
The Biden administration and its supporters like to say that crime is down. It’s like the old saying that figures don’t lie but liars can figure. As crime exploded during Covid and the George Floyd spree, the crime statistics went up faster than ever before. Now, those numbers have slightly dipped but are still nowhere near their pre-2019 levels. Voila, crime is down as compared to 2022, but it is not down compared to historical values.
The US ostensibly has two options. One is some type of religious or moral revival. The alternative is to have a Chinese police state with lots of cameras, all social media activity monitored and social scores given to citizens if they want to ride trains or get jobs. Such a society would obviously not support the freedoms that have been the hallmark of American society and a beacon for millions to come to the US legally or otherwise.
So what’s it going to be? The current situation seems like all of the terrible New York crime movies of the 1970s coming to life. Many people have left California, New York and other locations with increasing crime, homelessness and heavy taxation. If the US relies on CCTV cameras, drones, and omnipresent police to keep citizens in line, then the country will become one more unfree state, like England where a fellow was arrested for telling a policeman that his horse was gay. Also, people will engage in crime when they believe that they can get away with it. The smash-and-grab and shoplifting crowd know that they are being filmed and watched, but they don’t care. They correctly believe that the odds of no consequences are in their favor.
The US’s long-term future must be based on a moral strengthening of the population, not through coercion but through the people choosing to live a better, redeemed life. In the worlds of Alexis de Tocqueville:
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her fertile fields and boundless forests, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her public school system and her institutions of learning, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
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