Horowitz: America’s most violent year

We have domestic terrorism in this country, all right. It's just that it emanates almost exclusively from the left and violent career criminals. When will our focus shift to those people? And if not, what's the purpose of having law enforcement other than to empower a tyrannical government?

Every last person involved in the Capitol riot will be brought to justice … and then some. But when will the people responsible for the most violent year be brought to justice?

It's not just the widespread arson, looting, vandalism, and blocking of roads we continue to see from Antifa and Black Lives Matter even now, into 2021. It's the widespread effects of the lawlessness and deterrent against policing (rather than against criminals) that has led to the sharpest one-year increase in crime in recent history.

Earlier this week, Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal revealing some startling crime statistics from 2020:

• "Murder was up nearly 37% in a sample of 57 large and medium-size cities." Some cities experienced sharper increases: 95% in Milwaukee, 78% in Louisville, Ky., 74% in Seattle, 72% in Minneapolis, 62% in New Orleans, and 58% in Atlanta, for example.
• In total, at least 2,000 more Americans were killed in 2020 than in 2019.
• This year, we witnessed brazen attacks on black children through gang warfare and drive-by shootings. "Fifty-five children were killed in Chicago in 2020, 17 in St. Louis, and 11 in Philadelphia. In South Los Angeles alone, 40 children were shot, some non-lethally, through September."

Mac Donald points out that most media figures and politicians blame the spike in violence on the stress of the pandemic. To the extent that this is not an indictment of their lockdown policies, Mac Donald observes the obvious fact that crime actually fell for the first few months of the pandemic and only rose at the end of May with the rise of BLM, the rioting, and the attacks on police.

It's not just the war on cops, but the war on incarceration. Virginia Democrats, for example, are debating SB 1370, a bill that will enable judges to retroactively shorten life sentences for some of the state's worst murderers. Many county jails have been emptied of their criminals thanks to endless rounds of de-incarceration "reforms." It's taking its toll on the streets.

The tragic irony is that as politicians abolish bail, shorten sentences, and drop prosecution of career violent criminals or rioters, the entire force of the federal law enforcement apparatus and some state law enforcements are being harnessed against conservative activists and Trump supporters, even those who did not engage in violence at the Capitol. Thus, we are now confronted with even more street violence as law enforcement stands down against the mayhem staring them in the face and leaves no stone unturned in persecuting Trump supporters.

In lower Manhattan this week, a flash mob ruthlessly beat a man on the street, leaving him bloodied and naked. Do you think for a minute those "youths" will be brought to justice? Do you think law enforcement will use technology to track down and prosecute even those who were in the vicinity of the attack, like they are doing with Capitol Hill?

The reality is that politicians only protect their own. You can beat civilians and destroy private property, because those are not sacred to our government. Then again, even public property, if demolished by the left, is not that sacred. The man who pleaded guilty to burning down the third precinct police station of the Minneapolis PD last May faces, at most, four years in prison before the early release programs likely trim the sentence down further. Hundreds of people were involved in the burning, but no more than four perpetrators will be charged at all. I'm sure the man caught moving Nancy Pelosi's lectern in the Capitol will serve more time in federal prison.

As the media and government obsessively focus on "right-wing terrorism," it's not like the violence they are ignoring is ancient history. It's still happening. The violence in 2021 looks to be getting even worse. Shootings in south Los Angeles are up 742%. Eleven people have already been killed in Oakland, as compared to just one at the same date in 2020. Antifa continues to riot and block streets with impunity in places like Tacoma, Seattle, and Portland every single day. There is no safety net or backstop to the lawlessness as the entire law enforcement apparatus of the federal government trains its fire on Trump supporters.

Which raises the uncomfortable question: Should conservatives join with the left and support abolishing the police, at least the urban police departments (as opposed to rural sheriffs)? Throw in the FBI and the federal law enforcement agencies while we're are at it. If ordered liberty is no longer an option on the menu because the government refuses to do its core job and deter crime and violence, why should we have law enforcement around to be used as a blunt instrument against us and as an enforcement for tyranny? Why should we have law enforcement standing at the ready to arrest single moms like Larvita McFarquhar for opening her restaurant in Minnesota as violence pervades the streets of their cities uncontrollably?

What good is law enforcement if the only time they are effective is in enforcing COVID fascism, hampering us from defending ourselves against Antifa, clamping down on the First Amendment, and generally empowering despotic regimes to supplant our Constitution? I'd rather suffer from plain anarchy than a dystopian mix of anarchy for the fringe left and tyranny for the rest of us.