In a recent debate with incumbent N.Y. Governor Kathy Hochul, her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin, accused her of being soft on crime. In her response she actually said: “I don’t know why that’s so important to you.”
Interviewed on Sunday, Oct 30, by MSNBC’s Al Sharpton, Hochul described the Republicans as “master manipulators” whose refusal to support Democratic efforts to drastically reduce the availability of guns was utterly hypocritical. In her defense, she pointed out that the current murder rate in N.Y. was actually down from what it was in 2021. Yet a recent poll indicates crime is in fact the major concern of most of her state’s citizens.
“Progressives” and “conservatives” approach the issue of human criminality from utterly different perspectives. Sharpton and Hochul focus on the availability of guns, as if that rather than Man’s historically documented inclination to violence lies at the heart of the problem. But criminals intent on mayhem not only manage to acquire firearms whatever the laws seeking to deter them, they have in fact found all sorts of other ways to slaughter their fellow man. Implicit in the Left’s ethos is its naive belief that through legislation it can control human behavior, that acts of violence are the result of remediable social injustices, indeed that Human Evil is but a fiction of the White, Christian, Patriarchal West. That nothing in all of history validates this notion does not seem to matter!
“Conservatives,” acknowledging the realities of the species, insist those devoid of conscience will always find a way to vent their poison while decent, law-abiding citizens ought to be able to defend themselves. Clearly those seeking to acquire a gun need to be thoroughly scrutinized. If there are, as reported, loopholes enabling prospective gun owners to bypass such scrutiny, they absolutely need to be closed. Yet as appalling as it may be to the anti-gun lobbyists of the world, I have no problem whatsoever with every law-abiding citizen of every Democracy on the planet possessing the means to defend themself against the threat of criminal violence.
The Blaze news network constantly cites examples of legal gun owners saving the lives of the innocent precisely because they were armed. That those breaching their homes in the middle of the night or perhaps threatening mayhem in a public place often end up dead, is unfortunate. But one innocent life saved, in my world at least, more than compensates for the deaths of any number of those who, for whatever reason, seem to have decided their urges, however irrational, however criminal, supersede the rights of all others. Pardon my antediluvian moral perspective, but I am unequivocally on the side of Law and Order!
Coincidentally, Common Sense with Bari Weiss just posted an article citing the fact that Oregon, governed by Democrats for the past 4 decades, may be on the brink of voting Republican in its upcoming election. Crime is out of control in Portland, law abiding citizens citing homeless encampments rife with fentanyl abuse inevitably resulting in criminal threats to surrounding communities, threats which the city’s “compassionate” rulers have more or less ignored. As is evident in California, Illinois, N.Y. and elsewhere, “progressives” seem to care more about the welfare of the “marginalized,” however they may have become so, than that of decent, law-abiding citizens. Hence Kathy Hochul’s idiotic admission that she can’t understand why Republicans are fixated on issues of Law and Order! Her disconnect from reality is perhaps best exemplified by the hypocritical reaction of the wealthy denizens of Martha’s Vineyard, many of whom are proponents of Biden’s open immigration policy just so long as the migrants in question do not end up on the doorstep of their ocean-side mansions.
Yes, it’s easy to espouse noble sentiments about “inclusiveness” and “compassion” when the real-world results of these simplistic Leftist obsessions don’t actually have any impact on your life!