America’s Broken Windows

In criminology, the “broken windows” theory posits that visible signs of crime and civil disorder encourage only more serious crimes and antisocial behaviors. A community that is perceived to permit vandalism, fare evasion, public intoxication, and petty theft will soon find that it must defend against rising rates of robbery, rape, and murder. Tackling smaller forms of criminal mischief nips violent crimes in the bud. Although Wyatt Earp and other Wild West lawmen put the theory into practice long before social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling wrote about it in the 1980s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton popularized its use when they successfully implemented “broken windows” policies that saved New York City from a decades-long crime spiral.

Communist Mayor Bill de Blasio later framed “broken windows” policing as inherently racist, retreated from many sensible initiatives, and punished cops for proactively fighting crime. The residents of NYC have subsequently paid the price with their deteriorating safety.

Such has been the much larger pattern throughout American society. Cultural Marxists and other communist coalitions attack good and sound policies as racist, sexist, transphobic, or guilty of some other ugly -ic or -ist smear; those traditional standards of behavior are repudiated; and then Americans suffer the consequences of living in a society without norms, manners, or common decency. Throwing bricks through America’s windows while blaming others for their crimes, leftists have spent the last century engaging in purposeful destruction so as to bring about America’s demise. Throw a brick here; throw a brick there; eventually, Americans wake up in a nation where government tyrants nonchalantly lock up their political opponents, censorship is widespread, and young adults can no longer determine whether they are boys or girls.

Family, faith, and community fellowship provide the backbone to any healthy society. Constitutional protections, limited government, and respect for individual rights all begin around family life. When people build strong homes, foster self-sufficiency, encourage hard work, value private property, and share inter-generational knowledge and support, they create the foundations for a free and prosperous society. When they believe in a higher power, dedicate themselves to pursuing a moral life, and think beyond their own urges, they encourage the growth of civic virtue. When they choose forgiveness over grievance, seek to put aside past conflicts, and find value in common defense, they transform communities into countries. Simple seeds produce boundless harvests.

It should be no surprise, then, that cultural Marxists have dedicated their energies to the destruction of family, faith, and fellowship. Where children are encouraged to reject their parents, the State becomes their family. Where religion is denigrated as superstitious or dangerous, government is worshiped as a false god. Where communities are pitted against one another and politicians insist on keeping citizens divided, disorder and chaos make self-government impossible and authoritarian government certain.

Why have Marxists been breaking America’s windows for so many decades? Because only in the rubble of societal ruin can communist tyranny reign supreme.

With baseball back in action (albeit with seemingly never-ending rule changes), it is fun to look at old photos from Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, or Tiger Stadium. Men attired in suits; women wearing long dresses, elegant hats atop their heads; and a general sense of decorum fill up every black-and-white scene. Whatever rowdiness remains hidden from these old glimpses back in time, they serve as a reminder that society once fostered not only a concern for one’s personal appearance, but also a mutual appreciation for public propriety. Fashion was not strictly about comfort, but existed as a silent form of communication demonstrating good manners and respect for others.

Today, good manners and respect for others are out of fashion, if not obsolete. Forget any “sirs,” “madams,” or “beg your pardons” from ever being uttered, but do expect to hear lurid vulgarity where you might once have least expected it. Profanity and salty stories are nothing new, but their public proliferation is. Just as with respectful fashions, courteous language is a sign of a sober mind possessing enough empathy to consider others within earshot. Crass language and animalistic behavior are the hallmarks of unremitting egocentrism and perpetual adolescence. In an era so drowning in debauchery that political leaders and schoolteachers believe it appropriate to introduce the youngest students to pornography and drag shows, though, it is easy to see how probity has been replaced with anything goes. The obvious consequence is that self-reliant American adults have been replaced with a nation of children whom Daddy Government can choose to punish when bad and reward when well behaved. That’s how Marxists make slaves.

In a very short time, we have gone from holding doors for ladies, treating our elders with respect, and engaging in mutual courtesies to barely-there clothing, targeting elders as easy prey, and ludicrously labeling good manners as signs of “patriarchy” and “white supremacy.” The women in those black-and-white photos of Fenway Park still managed to seem perfectly alluring, but today’s leftists believe that feminism requires “shouting your abortion” and letting confused men struggling with their own identities redefine womanhood. The men in those photos still managed to convey dignity and self-respect regardless of their personal wealth, but today’s leftists believe that masculinity is “toxic” and that good manners belong only to the upper class.

These cultural transformations — what many Establishment Republicans derisively ignored as meaningless events in an unimportant “Culture War” — have proven to be tremendously consequential. What started out as pebbles thrown against small windows of abandoned buildings turned into bricks demolishing whole glass walls once reflecting America’s common mores and beliefs. Those vandalized beliefs not only undermined society’s moral foundations, but also left America like an ugly, forgotten building — broken and decayed. In truth, Marxists’ cultural destruction of America has far exceeded “broken windows” and more closely resembles the actions of a malevolent arsonist intent on setting fires, big and small, wherever opportunity arises. And the cost of never putting those Marxist fires out when they were first set is today’s raging inferno.

The U.S. government actively engages in viewpoint discrimination and political censorship. J6 political prisoners rot in jail. Churches are firebombed for refusing to redefine the institution of marriage or insisting on protecting the sanctity of every unborn life. Children are sexually groomed in the classroom for the pleasure of perverted adults. Medical doctors castrate and mutilate confused minors before they have had a chance to truly live. News media spread endless waves of State-controlled propaganda while accusing political dissenters of being propagandists. Intellectuals publish a bloated collection of narrow groupthink while accusing free thinkers of being too dumb to understand the issues. Patriotic Americans who love their country are branded “domestic terrorists” while anti-American zealots who insist America is irredeemably racist are rewarded with prizes. A presidential candidate who destroyed subpoenaed evidence and fabricated an international Russian conspiracy that divided the nation suffers no legal consequences, yet an elected president who took no salary while surviving one Deep State attack after the next is persecuted still today. These are the rotten fruits of Marxist seeds.

All of this should make clear that America’s problems cannot be solved through elections alone. The bad roots must be ripped from the ground before we begin the hard work of healthy planting. Before we repair all the broken windows, we must first face head-on those who do the breaking. Before we build America back up, we must break down those who set fires for a living.

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