Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Do Leftists Now Believe Leftism Doesn’t Work?

San Francisco homeless

It is hard to destroy a naturally beautiful city like San Francisco, with ideal weather and stunning infrastructure inherited from far better earlier generations.

Yet San Francisco continues its much-publicized and self-inflicted doom loop. The productive classes still flee the increasingly crime-ridden city and its self-induced pathologies. The city is eroding not because of the doomsayers and not because of what people say about San Francisco, but because of what San Franciscans have done to San Francisco.

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Commentary: New Year’s Resolutions for a Better America

Entering the new year, it is traditional to set goals and pronounce resolutions to improve ourselves and our lot in life during the coming 12 months.

Although these resolutions are more often honored in their breach than their fulfillment, they are nonetheless a useful tool to focus our attention on our weak points, whether we have the fortitude to correct them or not.

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Conservative Organization Unveils Ad Campaign Targeting ‘Hyper-Deadly Consequence’ of Democrats’ Crime Policies

Citizens for Sanity, a conservative organization, is targeting the effects of “far-left policies” on rising crime rates in a new six-figure nationwide ad campaign.

The ad from Citizens for Sanity, first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, is set to circulate on Facebook and YouTube after Labor Day and is targeted toward Latino voters. It criticizes “woke progressive prosecutors” releasing “dangerous predators before trial” and features footage of criminal violence.

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Commentary: Restoring Law and Order in America

On June 25, Joe Biden signed into law the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” a gun control bill that sailed through the U.S. Congress in reaction to recent mass shootings. With another high-profile mass shooting on July 4, many politicians are already wondering if the new law went far enough. But “mass shootings,” the overwhelming majority of which are perpetrated by well-armed inner city gangs, are just one tragic element of an overall breakdown of law and order in the United States. Restoring law and order is possible without resorting to radical, reactionary measures. We need to reinstate policies that worked in the past and will work again.

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Commentary: Republicans Give Left-Wing Prosecutors a Pass, Indict Conservatives Instead

It’s no secret that the Democratic Party has arrayed itself on the side of crime and criminals. But the GOP, for all its chest-thumping about law and order, has done little to help and, in some instances, actually sided with the forces of anarchy. Consider the cases of two prosecutors, Jackie Johnson and Frederick Franklin, both of whom served under Republican governors. 

Franklin has been praised for railroading a white man, Jake Gardner, who shot dead a black criminal, James Scurlock, in Nebraska. Johnson has been charged on specious grounds for her role in the investigation into the killing of a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, by a white man, Travis McMichael, in Georgia. Franklin has long supported left-wing causes, while Johnson is a Republican. Both incidents involving them occurred in 2020, but their fortunes couldn’t be more different.    

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Commentary: Secure Law and Order in America

Over July Fourth weekend, according to CNN, at least 233 people were killed and 618 others were injured in more than 500 shootings across the country. Unbelievably, those tragic statistics actually represent a 26 percent decrease from July Fourth weekend in 2020. But overall, violent crime in 2021 across the nation—and especially in major urban corridors—has only increased over 2020’s horrific baseline. Nationwide murder rates in 2021 to date show a roughly 25 percent annual increase over 2020, and that number spikes to roughly 30 percent in our large cities. In New York City, there has been a 32 percent year-to-date increase in rape and a 42 percent increase in grand larceny.

Increasingly, Americans do not need to look very far to experience the horrific violence in an up-close and personal manner. Last week, for instance, a 22-year-old University of Chicago student was senselessly killed by what appeared to be a stray bullet while riding the subway system near the university’s Hyde Park campus. As a University of Chicago alum and former Hyde Park resident, that could have very easily been me. But such heartbreaks are not limited to the city of Chicago, America’s murder capital. All across the nation, “could have easily been me” is becoming commonplace, as Americans survey the carnage and destruction all around them.

The extended escalation in violent crime in America began in earnest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s unfortunate death. Black Lives Matter, an avowedly Marxist organization despite its anodyne-sounding name, immediately latched onto the post-Floyd national racial reckoning and instrumentalized it for its own agenda. Together with Antifa and various left-wing anarchist groups, BLM helped orchestrate a summer of riotous mayhem and bloodshed like the country had not seen in decades. Major cities were hit the worst, but even distant suburbs such as Kenosha, Wisconsin, were not spared the BLM-antifa warpath.

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