In 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky published his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment.  The book essentially was a morality play.  The notion that punishment would follow the commission of a crime was not a new concept.  It was founded upon Judeo-Christian religious values.  After one has sinned, one must atone.  Those values were engrafted into our laws, and respect for the law was the underpinning of society.  Thomas Hobbes understood this in the 15th Century when, in Leviathan, he observed that men create governments and enact laws in order to preserve the fabric of society.  Without them, there exists no society, but instead a State of Nature, chaos, a war of every man against every man.  For hundreds of years, this was an accepted concept.  “The law’s the law.”  “Do the crime and you do the time.”  In the early 1930’s, the U.S. imposed production standards for motion pictures.  They could depict crime and criminals, but at the end, the law must triumph, and the guilty must be punished.  Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart all had good runs, but ultimately were done in by their comrades, or the government.  And when they weren’t killed, off they went to prison, to “pay their debt to society.”  That’s the way it was, and our leaders understood that that’s the way it had to be if society was to survive and prosper.  Thomas Hobbes said it best when he explained why Man must avoid the State of Nature.  “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  That’s not a pretty picture, but I fear it’s the world which we may be ushering in should we continue on the course we have been on these last few years.  We’ve lost our way.  We’ve abandoned any concept of morality, and thus the notion that some actions are acceptable, while others are unacceptable.  In arts, culture, communications and personal behavior, anything goes, up to and including criminal behavior.  It’s a conundrum.  The same Woke imbeciles who seek to steal your personal freedoms to speak your mind, and control your own affairs, seem willing to grant license to law-breaking rabble to do as they please.  As with all the paving stones on the road to Hell, these imbeciles believe they are well-intentioned.   They were fixing a non-existent problem, systemic racism.  I’ve explained this before, but in a nutshell, I live in a County where the Prosecutor, judges, police chiefs, jurors,  cops, and witnesses are predominantly “people of color.”  So, if criminal defendants are being railroaded by systemic racism, somebody has to explain to me how white supremecists got all these minority players go along with the plan.  Obviously, there is no plan, and no systemic racism.  If a particular criminal defendant was prejudiced by bias or some legal error, we have a court system which is ready and able to right that wrong.  That’s the work I do every day.  But that said, the Woke fantasyland view of the justice system encouraged us to defund the police, handcuff the police, cast the police as the criminals, no cash bail, and Woke prosecutors who refuse to enforce the laws on the books.  These misguided policies have led to the mess we now have.  Police officers reduced to observers of crime, reluctant to do their jobs for fear of losing their jobs, their property and their freedom.  City streets which have been abandoned to the mob.  Let’s focus on New York City.  The city that used to be The Big Apple, The City That Never Sleeps, and The Crossroads of the World is practically unrecognizable.  Subway ridership is down by almost half, while subway crime is up 60%.  If you don’t get robbed, killed, or mugged by a gang of women wearing skin-tight green jumpsuits, the extra added attraction is hoards of mentally deranged homeless people, who are liable to throw you under a train.  If you make it to your stop and ascend to street level, things do not improve.  The no bail system permits the same people to commit crimes all day, every day, and if arrested, be released right back onto the street to do it again.  There are stories of criminals with 40, 50, even more than 100 arrests continually exiting the revolving door.  And when these people get to trial, if they ever do, prosecutors are willing to downgrade serious, and violent crimes to minor offenses which keep the predators on the street.  Workers don’t want to return to the office.  Residents are reluctant to venture out.  More than 330,000 productive citizens have left New York City since 2020.  These are the people who did the work and paid the taxes.  How many restaurants and other businesses have closed as a result?  How many stores simply closed the doors because looters were permitted to steal, just a little at a time, until there was no business left?  And when the police won’t or can’t protect the poor unfortunates who remain, nothing is left but vigilante justice, which is no justice at all.  We’re not there yet, but we’re fast approaching Hobbes’ State of Nature.  Everything he predicted in 1651 appears before us.  No industry, no culture, no arts, letters or society.  Nothing left but the predators and their prey.  It’s all because Wokeism has set out to remake the world by collapsing our society.  When you convince people that they owe no debt to society, even if they commit crime, but that society owes them a living, no good can come of it.  There are signs that people have had enough Woke nonsense, and are ready to return to a world where actions have consequences.  On November 8, vote like your life depends on it, because it just might.  Don’t vote Democrat or Republican, vote for sanity.

We’re now just a couple of weeks from the mid-term elections, and all reports, even those from Fake-news media outlets, are not promising for Democrats.  Try as they might to make the upcoming elections all about abortion, the voters have other issues in mind.  Every poll shows that inflation and crime are the leading issues on the minds of voters this year.  To be sure, even on abortion policy, the Democrat official position – any abortion, any time, for any reason – is not in line with the majority of the public.  Legally flawed though it was, the Roe v. Wade decision was a reasonable compromise on an issue on which there will never be unanimity.  Simply put, most Americans favor some restrictions.  But I digress.  Getting back to the upcoming election, if voters go to the polls thinking about crime and inflation, the Democrats are in trouble.  Democrats seem to be their own worst enemies.  Threats to personal and family safety motivate voters like no other issue.  The judge I clerked for used to say, “The first duty of government is to keep people safe on the streets and in their homes.”  Democrat-ruled governments have failed to perform the first duty.  This makes no sense politically, but Democrats seem content to ignore the voters’ safety concerns.  They do so at their peril.  The Democrat response to inflation is similarly tone-deaf.  Prices on everything are soaring.  People are struggling to feed their families.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, obviously with the blessing of his handlers, has elected to try to convince voters all is well.  Don’t believe your lying eyes or your bank balance, things have never been better.  It won’t work.  At every turn, Joe Biden and reality are at odds.  Joe says the economy is “strong as Hell.”  Voters know they are in Hell.  The stock market is down 25%, interest rates have tripled, and we’re entering a recession.  Joe says there really is no inflation, or else it’s just 2%.  He’s either remembering when Trump was president, or else he’s just lying.  Democrat spending bills, which have resulted in the printing of trillions of dollars of borrowed money, have fueled inflation.  Democrats want to spend even more.  But by far, the most damaging aspect of inflation is focused on oil prices.  Oil was $60 a barrel under Trump.  It peaked at $127 in March, remained in the $120 range entering the Summer, and now is over $91, and is rising.  Biden has blamed Putin and the oil companies for the increase, but he and his Party are to blame.  Once again, Joe Biden and reality are perfect strangers.  Biden ran for president on a promise to close down the oil and gas industry.  Once elected, he cancelled oil leases, restricted fracking, banned exploration on federal lands, and pressured banks to stop lending money to the industry.  The first three actions were economically and politically stupid, the last is outright illegal.  Gas and other fuel prices exploded.  Gasoline in New Jersey topped $5 a gallon.  Heating fuel for this winter will be $5 or more.   People in the liberal Northeast will be forced to choose between food and heat, not a pretty picture for a Party which is promising only more of the same.  As if this all wasn’t bad enough, Joe Biden has been spanning the globe to beg tyrants in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to produce more of the oil we could easily produce ourselves to ease prices.  He’s also been drastically depleting our strategic petroleum reserve in a vain attempt to hold prices down until November 8, when Democrats can yell, “Surprise!  You’re screwed!”  The reserve is supposed to protect us from the actions of foreign countries, not from not from our own stupidity.  Biden’s strategy is political, and incredibly stupid, since all the oil we’ll ever need is under our feet.  The lap dog media keeps trying to help Biden, criticizing the Saudis for not helping out, but they’re just as delusional as Joe.  Why should the Saudis help us?  Oil is a global market.  Why should the Saudis increase their production to help a country that has reduced its own production, when they can profit from the rising prices Biden caused?  Plus, Biden is the guy who promised to destroy the oil industry, right?  And the Saudi economy is almost entirely based on the industry Biden promised to put out of business, right?  Plus, plus, Biden is again trying to make an agreement with the Iranians, who are sworn enemies of the Saudis, and he’s badmouthed the Saudis to the rest of the world.  Only a senile, crazy old bastard would expect the Saudis to forget everything and bail us out.  The truth is Democrats don’t care about you, your budget, your savings, how you’re going to get to work, or how you’re going to feed your family.  They care about only one thing – getting reelected.  They want to stay in power, but they’re caught between a rock and a crazy place.  Democrats are losing Hispanic voters, suburban women, and even support among black voters because they won’t lift a finger to stop crime, or improve the inflation or energy problems.  They must know that their positions on these issues are political poison, but if they crack down on crime, stop the profligate spending that’s fueling inflation, and encourage U.S. oil production, they risk losing their base – the Woke crazies, who actually are in favor of closing industries, rationing electricity, and curtailing all freedoms – “because if we don’t, we’ll all be dead in seven years.”  These are religious zealots, and zealot is the right word.  A zealot is a fanatical partisan, taking their name from a First Century Jewish sect in Judea.  The original Zealots all died by suicide.  Today’s Democrat positions are equally suicidal.  Joe Biden can’t appease both his nutty climate change obsessed base and the mass of voters who have been hurt by their policies.  Come November 8, he may be boiled in the oil he’s taken from Americans.

I don’t often recycle past F on F columns, but this year’s edition of Woke anti-Columbus Day nonsense has caused me to bring back a column on this issue from October 2017.  In a nutshell, I am sick and tired of hearing that we must replace Columbus Day with some phony holiday called Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  This made up holiday is a fraud. The latest New York proposal claims, “Indigenous People’s Day reimagines Columbus Day and changes a celebration of colonialism into an opportunity to reveal historical truths about the genocide and oppression of indigenous people in the Americas, to organize against current injustices and to celebrate indigenous resistance.”  Where to begin?  Most basically, Columbus Day is not now, nor has it ever been a celebration of colonialism.  All it ever was was a recognition that in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed West from Spain and landed in the New World, which he believed was the old world.  Let’s reveal some historical truths.  Columbus never enslaved anybody.  In fact, he befriended the Taino Indians, and never treated them as a conquered people.  Columbus then successfully petitioned the crown to issue a royal decree that “all the Indians of Hispaniola were to be left free, not subject to servitude, unmolested, and unharmed and allowed to live like freemen under law just like any other in the kingdom of Castile.”  Columbus also freed enslaved Tainos from their indigenous brothers, the Carib Indians, who did enslave them.  So much for oppression and slavery.  Simply put, the Columbus slurs are a leftist crock of bullshit.  Here’s the 2017 column.

[One more thing.  Indigenous Peoples’ Day?  Indigenous to what? Columbus explored the Caribbean.  He never set foot in what is now the United States.  Maybe they should celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Hispaniola.  We’ll remember Columbus.]

For more than 50 years, Democrats have been touting the notion that there are two Americas.  The haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor; divided by race and ethnicity.  There once was something to this argument.  “Two Americas” dates from a 1967 speech by Martin Luther King.  “There are literally two Americas.  One America is beautiful … and overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.  This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits …  But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair.  In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums.  In this America people are poor by the millions.  They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”  When Dr. King spoke those words, he had a point, but a succession of government programs, coupled with unprecedented economic growth largely changed that landscape.  Dr. King died while trying to secure basic civil rights and simple human dignity in the face of blatant racism, which thankfully, no longer exists.  But rather than celebrate the advancements of 50 years of social progress, Democrats are still preaching the gospel of Two Americas.  Without an underclass to pretend to help, the Democrat Party has no message.  And no amount of social progress, no improvement in race relations, and no appeals to reality will be accepted.  I can prove it.  The MLK quote cited above was not from an historical record of the 1960’s, it was from a 2020 article in The Nation, in which the author, in the lead up to the 2020 election, argued that “inequality in this country has been on the rise to previously unimaginable levels, while poverty has remained locked in and largely ignored.”  Keep in mind that this statement was made at a time when minority employment, and minority advancement was at its highest point in history.  Clearly, Democrats have nothing else to offer, and that’s become a problem.  As the midterm elections approach, large segments of the historically Democrat base are abandoning that Party.  Many Hispanic voters have decided that they don’t want to live in an America without borders, without genders, without law enforcement, and where work is optional.  There are also defections of African-American voters, which would be catastrophic to Democrats.  But Democrats are in need of the needy, so they’re shopping around.  The Left has spent the past 50 years indoctrinating college students with Socialist propaganda.  Young people have been conditioned to believe that there’s no need for hard work because everything comes free from the government.  So the Dems are trying to buy them off with an illegal student loan forgiveness program.  But two-thirds of the voters didn’t go to college, so they need another group to “help.”  Enter, millions of illegal aliens.  Pardon me, “irregular migrants.”  Democrats are importing these people in order to manufacture a new underclass in need of aid.  Democrats are creating Two Americas, but this time there’s a difference.  Dr. King saw those in poverty as second class citizens.  Today’s Democrats have a different plan.  The divide is not ethnic or racial, and it’s not truly economic.  Instead, Democrats seek to subordinate the rights of the hard-working, tax-paying, American citizen, to those of the newly admitted illegal alien.  Don’t doubt me.  Simply open your eyes.  Illegal aliens are greeted at the border with new clothes, new phones, and government plane flights all over the country.  All 2.2 million illegals (that we know about) who enter America every year are considered to be asylum seekers, so Democrats pretend that they will someday appear in court to prove their status, though they know that’s a lie.  Democrats exalt “equity,” so they dare not discriminate, for instance, just because some of these people are mentally disturbed criminals.  Oh no!  Illegals without proper identification are permitted to board airline flights using an arrest warrant as a means of ID.  You try that.  Nobody’s mandating Covid vaccines, or any other medical screening, for the illegals in their America.  In your America however, you can’t work, travel, or send your kid to school without them.  In illegal alien Democrat America, everything is free.  Housing, medical care, education, food, transport – all supplied by Uncle Sucker.  In second class citizen America (that’s where you live) the top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the income taxes, and Democrats say they don’t pay their fair share.  In your America, rents and mortgage costs are astronomical and housing is extremely difficult to acquire.  In illegal alien America, this is not a concern.  The government is expected to supply every need.  However, there’s a problem.  National Democrats are so intent on replacing you with a new, needy population, that local Democrats can’t keep up.  As this is written, Mayor Adams in New York has begun to complain that too many replacement citizens have been admitted by his own Party.  He’s running out of places to put them.  Adams is moving a tent city for illegals to Randall’s island, where, presumably, the migrants will be able to enroll in the John McEnroe Tennis Academy.  Meanwhile, when so many American citizens are having trouble being able to afford little things like food and fuel due to Biden’s inflation, New York City is negotiating for the long-term lease of a luxury cruise ship, on which to house thousands of illegal aliens at an estimated cost of $15 million a month.  And while this may strike you, a mere American citizen, as crazy, insulting, and extravagant, for the Left, it’s not good enough.  The  Legal Aid and Coalition for the Homeless opposes the cruise ship plan, as well as the tent city plan, as violations of the legal rights of illegal aliens.  So, as you can see, the Democrats are right.  There clearly are Two Americas, as Democrats are hard at work trying to turn the hard-working American citizen into a second class citizen, whose only roles will be to pay up and shut up.  Now, you can sit back and accept second class citizenship, or you can get up, get out and vote Democrats out of power in November.

A number of years ago Jonah Goldberg wrote a book entitled Liberal Fascism, which exposed leftists (liberals, progressives, Woke nuts, whatever) as the true purveyors of fascism.  Given recent events, Goldberg was ahead of his time.  Democrats spend so much time calling conservatives fascists that they fail to recognize that everything they say, and everything they do typifies the very essence of fascism.  Or else, they’ve taken a page from Joe Goebbels and are simply accusing conservatives of that which they are doing.  I think I’ll take what’s behind door number two.  Democrats lately have resorted to changing the meaning of words when it suits their purposes. In this way, consecutive quarters of negative growth are no longer a recession,  and a flood of illegals crossing the border means the border is secure.  Following this Democrat illogic, the new definition of a fascist is now anyone who isn’t a wild-eyed, Woke fanatic.  Witness the election of Italy’s Georgia Meloni.   Meloni’s conservative Brother’s of Italy Party won a majority in Italy’s recent election, making Meloni the incoming Prime Minister.  The Left went nuts, labeling Meloni and her Party, far right, extremist, neo-fascists; the heirs of Benito Mussolini.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Left must condemn Meloni because she represents a threat, not to the Italian republic, but to their Woke orthodoxy.  Simply put, Georgia Meloni is a refreshing voice of sanity in a world that has become increasingly out of touch with reality.  The Woketard media calls Meloni a neo-fascist.  In our Brave New World, I guess that’s what Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden would call a semi-fascist.  The media, of course, are lying.  And no one should mind being called a “semi-fascist” by Joe Biden, who is an Epsilon semi-moron.  The media response to Meloni’s election from MSNBC was predictable.  “Italy will become more enmeshed in far-right networks that stretch from Vladimir Putin’s Russia to Viktor Orban’s Hungary to Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil to Republican America. Like many Republicans, Meloni has done her best to present her extremism as mainstream and unexceptional.”  Only MSNBC could label a Communist dictator “far-right.”  And the only thing wrong with Orban and Bolsonaro is that they’re not Woke idiots, like all of the media.  So what’s wrong with Georgia Meloni?  Not a thing, unless you’re one of the Woke idiots, who are so intolerant that they cannot accept any opposition to their perverted policies.  So exactly what does Meloni’s Party stand for – “God, Fatherland, and Family.”  Shocking!  How extreme is that?  Meloni calls herself and her Party conservative, for centering freedom, the family, strong borders, and the defense of Italian nationalism.  Those positions are anything but fascist.  As David Harsanyi of The Federalist has pointed out, trying to connect Georgia Meloni to Italy’s fascist past is meaningless.  “It’s like saying Democrats have their “roots” in preserving slavery and segregation.”  The Left’s conclusion that Meloni’s dedication to families, faith and national identity is fascist exposes these Woke imbeciles for the perverted whackos that they truly are.  Some excerpts from Meloni speeches are revealing.  “Our main enemy today is the globalist drift of those who view identity and all its forms to be an evil to overcome. And constantly ask to shift real power away from the people to supernational entities headed by supposedly enlightened elites.  Why is the family an enemy?  Why is the family so frightening?  Because it defines us.  Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves.” And so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity. I can’t define myself as: Italian, Christian, woman, mother.  No. I must be citizen x, gender x, parent 1, parent 2. I must be a number.  Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators. ”  “We will defend God, country, and family.  Those things that disgust people so much.  We will do it to defend our freedom. Because we will never be slaves and simple consumers at the mercy of financial speculators.  That is our mission.”  Amen sister.  Meloni also quoted some words of G.K. Chesterton, words which, though written more than a century ago, apply no less to today’s world. “Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four.  Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.”  “That time has arrived.  We are ready.”  And try this Chesterton quote on for size.  “Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.”  But Georgia Meloni as the heir to Benito Mussolini?  Stop, look and listen to these Mussolini quotes, and compare them to the principles set forth by Georgia Meloni.  Here are some Benito’s best.  You decide which Party sounds more fascist. “We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.” “The press of Italy is free, freer than the press of any other country, so long as it supports the regime.”  “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”  “Fascism accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with the state’s.”  “At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.”  “Believe, obey, fight.”  “The truth is that men are tired of liberty.”  “We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.”  Every one of those Mussolini quotations embodies the policies of the Left.  Destroy, a/k/a “cancel” anybody who dares to disagree with you.  Assert government control over every aspect of life.  Subordinate the rights of the individual to the interests of the State.  Control education to indoctrinate the young.  Denigrate liberties in favor of obedience.  Let’s face it, the Leftists who run the Democrat Party are all fascist all the time.  Benito would be so proud.  Georgia Meloni rejects globalism and corporatism.  She refuses to sacrifice the freedoms and the faith of her citizens to the tender mercies of of the Woke mob, which denies history, ignores reality, and seeks to tear down faith, principle, and family, in pursuit of some perverted new world order.  Georgia Meloni should be celebrated as the voice of reason.  Viva Italia!