Richardcyoung.com

  • Home
  • Debbie Young
  • Jimmy Buffett
  • Key West
  • Your Survival Guy
  • How We Are Different
  • Paris
  • About Us
    • Foundation Principles
    • Contributors
  • Investing
    • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?
  • The Swiss Way
  • My Rifles
  • Dividends and Compounding
  • Your Security
  • Dick Young
  • Dick’s R&B Top 100
  • Liberty & Freedom Map
  • Bank Credit & Money
  • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
  • NNT & Cholesterol
  • Your Health
  • Ron Paul
  • US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool
  • Anti-Gun Control
  • Anti-Digital Currency
  • Joel Salatin & Alfie Oakes
  • World Gold Mine Production
  • Fidelity & Wellington Since 1971
  • Hillsdale College
  • Babson College
  • Contact Us

Smash and Grab Is Not about the Pandemic

December 7, 2021 By Debbie Young

By nyker @ Shutterstock.com

It was the Virus that made me do it. Honest.

Unprecedented Decline in Crime Increasing

Specific Democratic policies clearly are a significant part in the retreat from what had been perhaps the most important social advance of the past 50 years—an unprecedented decline in almost all categories of crime.

Blaming the Pandemic

Last week at a press conference, when White House press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if it was the pandemic was to blame for the surge in crime, as President Biden has suggested. Ms. Psaki acknowledged that, yes, the virus is “a root cause in a lot of communities.” The scapegoat here apparently is: no one is responsible.

Pilfering $25,000 LVMH Purses?

As Gerard Baker mocks in the WSJ, “It was the virus that made me do it, your honor. I was an honest, law-abiding citizen, doing my part to fight systemic racism and climate injustice, when all of a sudden, I developed a high fever and lost my sense of smell. Next thing I knew, I was pulling $25,000 Louis Vuitton purses out of display cases downtown. I can’t make bail but if you’ll let me go free, I’ll do my best to hunt down this vicious virus and help make our streets safe again.”

It’s easy to ridicule the mindset that seems unable or unwilling to understand the distinction between proper redress of our various social pathologies and the legal and moral obligations of personal responsibility. But this latest manifestation of the grip it has on our ruling class is a disturbing reminder of how far progressive ideology has propelled the country toward social disintegration.

Large and small stores have been ransacked by gangs. For example, shoplifting has reached such levels in cities like San Francisco that stores like Walgreens are shuttering due to the losses. After a California state law was changed to make stealing retail merchandise worth

$950 or less a misdemeanor, police mostly have stopped responding to shoplifting calls.

Deflecting Responsibility

It’s not only about the Democrats who run big cities (and, currently, the federal government) seeking to deflect any responsibility for the surge in crime—the one whose existence they and their friends in the media spent much of last year denying.

It is that this eagerness to find anyone to blame for crime other than the people committing it is a central feature of the nihilism eating away at the American identity—the idea that the country is so flawed that miscreants bear less responsibility for their actions than do the institutions that have supposedly oppressed them.

The Pandemic to Blame

Blaming the pandemic is what is most fostering the climate of lawlessness, argues Mr. Baker.

The idea that criminals are the victims—of circumstances, their upbringing, the cruel society that nurtured them—is a very old one. It seems to come in cycles. Each time, we have to learn the hard way that denial of individual responsibility is the quickest route to social disorder.

Under the Guise of Racial Reckoning

It began in earnest during the Black Lives Matter protests and accompanying riots. We were told that whatever violence was being committed then was justified, and that looting businesses was a kind of postmodern form of reparations for centuries of oppression.

The Quickest Route to Social Disorder

“What Kind of Society Values Property Over Black Lives?” (from a headline in the New York Times.)

These are luxury beliefs. The tenured professors, media commentators, entertainers and Democratic politicians who hold them live for the most part immune from the consequences of their ideological self-indulgence. The irony is apparently lost on them that most of the victims of their obtuse vanity are poor, innocent black people who can’t afford to believe such dangerous nonsense.

Should we be comforted that Joe Biden’s Justice Department is hunting down the real criminals menacing our way of life? You know, Mr. Baker reminds readers, those anxious parents across the country who want to stop teachers from indoctrinating their children with this ruinous ideology, and who are brave enough to speak out against it?

If you’re willing to fight for Main Street America, click here to sign up for the Richardcyoung.com free weekly email.

Related Posts

  • CDC Failures Made Pandemic Worse
  • Peanuts for Americans Struck by Pandemic Shutdowns
  • What’s Worse than a Pandemic
  • The Shocking Politics of a Pandemic
  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Debbie Young
Debbie Young
Debbie, our chief political writer of Richardcyoung.com, is also our chief domestic affairs writer, a contributing writer on Eastern Europe and Paris and Burgundy, France. She has been associate editor of Dick Young’s investment strategy reports for over five decades. Debbie lives in Key West, Florida, and Newport, Rhode Island, and travels extensively in Paris and Burgundy, France, cooking on her AGA Cooker, driving through Vermont and Maine, and practicing yoga. Debbie has completed the 200-hour Krama Yoga teacher training program taught by Master Instructor Ruslan Kleytman. Debbie is a strong supporting member of the NRA.
Debbie Young
Latest posts by Debbie Young (see all)
  • “Mostly Peaceful” Protests - June 12, 2025
  • The Problem with Violence Is Violence - June 11, 2025
  • Whoa, Hang on Here. There’s Trouble in Culver City - June 10, 2025

Dick Young’s Must Reads

  • Your Cash Swept into Your Broker’s Bank Account!
  • You May Be Surprised by America’s “Least Woke City”
  • Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Charles Koch Team Up
  • Sen. Hawley Makes the Case Against U.S.-China Relationship
  • What to Do about China?
  • Why You Miss Richard C. Young’s Monster Master List
  • Victor Davis Hanson: How to Bust DC’s Stronghold
  • Gold’s 50-Year Price Explosion
  • “The Losses are Taking a Toll on Their Health”
  • You’ve Read The Last Issue of Intelligence Report, Now What?

Our Most Popular Posts

  • Whoa, Hang on Here. There’s Trouble in Culver City
  • Is Salt Bad for You?
  • RON PAUL: Can Musk and Trump Reconcile?
  • $25 Million Down; $175 Million to Go
  • Saving Western Civilization
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #19: A Teacher for Life
  • No More NSAIDS for Back Pain?
  • There Are Only Two Ways to Cut Entitlements
  • The Federal Reserve Finally Killed the Penny
  • Ukraine’s Attack Underlines Need for Trump-Style Border Control

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

RSS Youngresearch.com

  • Graduating from Work to Retirement Special Bonus: God Only Knows
  • US Secures LNG Export Deals Worth $200 Billion
  • High-Voltage Cable Crunch Hits Global Electrification
  • May PPI Lower than Expected
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #20: Life in Reverse
  • US Inflation Eases to 0.1% in May
  • DOE Focuses on Nuclear and AI Innovation
  • Trump Delivers Lower Inflation and Rising Wages
  • Natural Gas Power Growth Slows, but Big Gains Possible by 2028
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #19: A Teacher for Life

RSS Yoursurvivalguy.com

  • Graduating from Work to Retirement Special Bonus: God Only Knows
  • Private Equity: Moody’s Warns There’s Ample Cause for Concern
  • Your Survival Guy: Castle Hill, Newport
  • Containerized Missiles and the New Rules of War
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #20: Life in Reverse
  • America’s Silent Army with 423M Guns
  • Top 10 Reasons to Own an AR-15
  • Graduating from Work to Retirement #19: A Teacher for Life
  • Can Luxury Ride AI to Success?
  • Market Timing Could Be Hazardous to Your Portfolio

US Treasury Yield Curve: My Favorite Investor Tool

My Key West Garden Office

Your Retirement Life: Traveling the Efficient Frontier

Live a Long Life

Your Survival Guy’s Mt. Rushmore of Investing Legends

“Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”

Copyright © 2025 | Terms & Conditions | About Us | Dick Young | Archives