Political crime, like the murder of Charlie Kirk, is one thing, and we are committed to crushing it – at this writing, there is a suspect in custody in Utah, which shoots criminals, and I’d hate to be his life insurance underwriter. Street crime is another issue, and after the assassination briefly took the focus off Iryna’s public transit murder, it will be back. As Republicans, solving street crime is a moral obligation as well as our ticket to victory in 2026. Luckily, the solution to the criminal disorder sweeping blue-run cities – yeah, Governor Hairstyle, the chaos in the red states is entirely within those parts of them that are deep blue – is pretty simple. It’s no secret. You simply refuse to tolerate disorder, from the worst manifestations of criminality like that shambling semi-human who decided to stab an innocent woman on a train car to the relatively minor (but still important) petty crimes like vandalism, shoplifting, fare-beating, and public disorderliness. But it’s not just actual crime that contributes to the inexcusable vibe of insecurity Dems tolerate. Some scumbag out in public who is demonstrating dominance of public spaces by acting menacingly, playing loud music, puffing on a spliff, or whatever, needs immediate and firm attention, whether by the official authorities or by citizens who understand that the government will have their back rather than the back of the miscreant.
We can say “No.” Disorder is a choice, and the Democrats have made it. They’d better rethink their choice, both for their own sake and for the sake of the dirtbags they are protecting. The “No” is coming, the easy way or the hard way.
We need not live this way, and we won’t. Other people have made the right choice – why not us? Last June, I was in Portugal, which I highly recommend – it’s pretty, the wine is top-notch, and the people are surprisingly based. At one point, we were walking through Lisbon, a big, cosmopolitan city, and we came to a park. In America, it would be full of junkies, hobos, gangsters, perverts, and other human detritus. But in Lisbon, kids were running around, teen couples were looking in each other’s eyes, and old people were playing chess. It was wonderful. It was how civilized people live. And it was the manifestation of a choice, a choice not to tolerate the bottom 10 percent of the population ruling the roost for the rest of us.
But the degenerates, empowered by Democrats, rule it here. And they have for a while. Let me bring you back to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, when I was a first lieutenant with the 3rd Battalion, 160th Infantry on the streets packing an M16 rifle. Most of my troops came from South-Central, and that’s where we patrolled. Though I had been in the Gulf War, I was still a suburban guy from San Mateo, California. The ghetto blew my mind; I could not believe Americans lived like that.
Like I said, my troops were primarily from South-Central, and they were taking no guff. All those rules the LAPD observed? Not applicable to us. At one point, they ungently cleared a park just before I rolled up with the battalion commander (frequent Townhall columnist COL (R) Bill Wenger). I’m walking around when this black lady comes up and hugs me. I’m perplexed. She tells me she’s lived there for years, and this was the first time her kids could ever play in that park.
Mind blown.
We don’t have to live like this. Rudy Giuliani proved it by taming the jungle that was 70s/80s New York City, turning it from “Death Wish” to Disneyland. And Donald Trump just did it in Washington, D.C. I was there a couple of weeks ago – it was nice. The Guardsmen on the street provided a presence that drove the dirtbags away. The burly federal agents interdicted the remaining dirtbags, and word is that the Washington cops got the OK to go get the high-intensity felons behind the greatest hits of major crimes. The cops know who’s a bad guy; they just don’t have the backing to go get them. As a society, we know that if you incapacitate the few hundred worst offenders, that will tank the crime stats because these vermin commit crimes all out of proportion to their numbers. Further, the example deters some portion of the others.
You have to refuse to tolerate not only major and petty crimes, but the kind of menacing domination of public spaces these creeps get off on. No, you don’t get to shout on your phone, hop the turnstile, or play your crappy music on the Metro. The deviants need people in their faces demanding compliance, not understanding, not caring, and certainly not tolerance. We tried tolerance, and Iryna bled out in a train.
So, now it’s time to try something else. Now it’s time to not tolerate disorder. This is not new – civilized societies throughout history have done this. The ones that did not quickly dissolve. Those that did often did so with a harshness that would give pause to many of us. But let me tell you, there’s less and less potential for pause out there as crime runs rampant.
Let me chart the moderate course. It means we stop tolerating this stuff and bring back swift and certain punishment by lawful authority. Nothing wacky, nothing that would be unfamiliar to most non-urban Americans, even 30 years ago when Clinton offered his 100,000 cops plan, where we imposed mandatory sentences, and had three-strikes laws. Just firm law enforcement from cop to judge. But not just law enforcement. We must retake and defend public spaces from the creeps.
Hobos, I don’t know where you are going to go, but it’s not on our sidewalks, on our public transit, or in our parks. Jail, forced rehab, mental commitment, or get yourself behaving like a normal person. It’s one of those. The option to make us indulge your pathologies is over.
Criminals, I don’t care what continent your great-grandfather came from. You can call us “racist” from Rikers. You commit a crime, and we remove you from society for a long stretch. We charge crimes, and there’s no “cashless bail.” If you are bad enough, we hang you. “Due process” means a fair trial that determines guilt; it’s not an interminable exemption from retribution.
Understand that this is not a matter of cops alone. It’s a matter of will throughout the system. Do we have the will to enforce our laws and punish evildoers? Democrats better find the will and exercise it if they want to avoid a blowout in 2026. You can feel the zeitgeist changing. People are done being told they have some sort of racial or social obligation to shrug off being victimized. That’s done, finished, over.
Now, that’s the moderate option, where we enforce laws, refuse to tolerate public disorder, and punish criminals with tough but reasonable sentences. It’s a good deal – the left should jump at it. The left should jump at it because the hard option is on the table. We are talking vigilantes. We are talking cops off the leash, dispensing street justice as they see fit. We are talking two-strikes laws and the noose for a lot of things, without endless appeals. You think that’s not possible? Think again, because if the choice is young women getting their throats cut by guys who have had a dozen close encounters with the cops or degenerates like him, either locked away forever or swinging from a gibbet several felonies ago, I can tell you how that will come down.
Americans are tired of paying the price in blood for the bizarre ideological pathologies of the left. That is going to end, and if they keep a moderate like Donald Trump from ending it the easy way, someone is going to come along who will end it the hard way. If they murder voices of reason, other voices will rise and it will not be pretty. Spit on the street in Singapore and see how that goes.
Choose wisely.
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