Left Wing Libs Fiddle While Cities Burn

It is possible to be in a bad situation and still keep order. But it takes leadership and the will of the people to do so.

I had an experience during the early days of the war in Afghanistan. My small team lived for most of a year among the Afghan people hours away from any military base. Everywhere we looked there was devastation and deprivation brought on by decades of war and tyranny. The detritus of war was so commonplace that the Afghan people had become numb to it.

But on one occasion I came upon a remote village high in the Hindu Kush mountains that caught me off guard. Situated well above the rest of the world the idyllic village seemed different, with beautiful fields of cultivated sunflowers and crops growing beside rushing mountain streams with small stone foot bridges. The traditional mud brick homes stacked on the hillsides, and perched above streams, all seemed well kept and beautiful. I remarked at the time that it was like the war had never even been there - it felt like we had discovered the legendary Shangri-La.

The difference was that the people cared. Their leaders cared. They had decided not live amongst the debris of war, or succumb to the mindset that “this is just how it is”. They had pride in their homes, and lived with the understanding that they could not change the world but they could change where they lived.

I would love to go back and see it again under different circumstances.

Consider that same premise in American cities. Left wing agitators and immigration apologists are constantly, even violently, attempting to interfere with federal law enforcement. Recently protestors swarmed to a marijuana farm (let that sink in) and assaulted ICE agents and National Guard troops as they served warrants. Over 200(!) illegal immigrants were taken into custody. Agitators blocked roads, climbed on law enforcement vehicles, and assaulted officers. Overhead video showed one individual appearing to fire a gun at law enforcement officers.

We’ve seen this same scene play out in an endless loop in venues like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland. Where are the leaders? Where are the elected officials? Where are the calls about law and order?

California Governor Gavin Newsom was in South Carolina campaigning against Trump for reasons no one could fathom. His plan was simply to blame the federal government and encourage the protestors. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a woman out of her league who has become a living meme, held a press conference to announce to announce that she stands with illegal immigrants, will resist enforcement of the laws, and that she had filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding to know the names of the ICE agents in her city. The Mayor of Chicago pronounced an official policy of noncooperation with ICE and calling for citizens to “rise up” against federal agents. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin spoke of a defiance of immigration enforcement on national TV. The same Mayor Woodfin who’s murder rate continues to climb while he issues blanket pardons for drug offenses dating back to years in which he was just in grade school.

Let’s be clear, the reasons why we are seeing a 500% increase in assaults on federal law enforcement is because 1) the progressive left is willing to commit violence: AND 2) progressive left leadership is willing to turn a blind eye at best, and encourage it at worst. Liberal leftwing lunatics are burning American cities down while liberal leftwing leaders are fiddling.

The point is that the people of any community do not have to just settle for disruption and disorder. The essential functions of government include providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, establishing justice and insuring domestic tranquility. Those are mandates that are not just related to national defense on a geopolitical scale. Those are mandates that relate to safe streets, peaceful communities, enforcement of laws. Those mandates are prescribed in our founding documents and every single elected leader swears an oath to “uphold and defend” them.

But too often liberals feel that their role is to make life easier for the criminals and harder for the law-abiding citizens. Yet all too often law-abiding citizens grow numb like the vast number of Afghan citizens I knew who just accepted a life of societal upheaval.

But that Shangri-La village in the mountains? They got it. They knew they did not have to settle for discord and destruction. American cities should take that lesson to heart.

The good folks in these municipal centers of chaos have to speak up and tell their elected leaders that criminal elements fomenting disorder, crime and violence will not be tolerated. Tell them that we live here, this is our home, and we care.

For far too long the people of these blue cities have just capitulated, believing that there is nothing they can do. They live with it

If a village in the high places of Afghanistan can make itself look like a postcard then we can do the same right here at home. Law and order matters. It is about quality of life. It’s about leadership.

Tell the leftist leaders to stop fiddling while our cities burn.

Because this is our house……and it matters.