What do you call a place where just laws are ignored while onerous ones are enforced, where criminals are elevated and good citizens subordinated?
Sadly, it can be called modern America, and the latest example is how illegal aliens in New York are now waiting in long lines for driver’s licenses without any fear of deportation. Meanwhile, New York City now prohibits (in certain contexts) calling someone an “illegal alien” “out of ‘hate’” or to refusing to use someone’s preferred Made-up Sexual Status (MUSS) pronouns, with fines for the latter being as high as $250,000.
The illegal-alien driver’s-license outrage was addressed in court, but as the The Hill reports, “A federal judge on Friday denied a challenge to a law that will allow New York to give driver’s licenses to [illegal aliens].”
“The law, which is set to go into effect next week, was facing its second challenge in court, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reports,” the site continues. “U.S. District Judge Gary Sharpe ruled against Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, saying he lacked the legal capacity to bring the lawsuit against the state over the new law.”
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“Three other lawsuits are either pending or are on appeal,” the National Sentinel adds, “but NY state officials implemented it on Monday anyway because no court had issued a stay until the matter can be settled once and for all.”
The Sentinel also asks, “Why aren’t federal immigration officials here rounding people up?” and then elaborates:
New York jurisdictions may claim to be “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens, forbidding their own local law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration officials or helping enforce federal immigration laws.
Got it. But why the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency wasn’t at these licensing facilities in force is a mystery.
We still have a country, a functioning system of government. We have the rule of law that House Democrats have been clinging to as their supposed reason for impeaching President Trump.
Unfortunately, the truth is that we have a diminishing rule of law, with the current impeachment Exhibit A. The congressional leftists are attempting to remove President Trump from office despite his not having broken the law; this means they’re acting outside the law and, projecting, are guilty of the exact undermining of the Constitution and Republic of which they accuse the president.
Yet while pursuing the “criminalization of political differences,” as constitutional law scholar and lifelong Democrat Alan Dershowitz has put it, they’re also decriminalizing criminal behavior. The granting of illegals driver’s licenses and other benefits is just one example, too.
Another is a new California law and its application, which have created a situation where shoplifting now often isn’t prosecuted if the theft is under $950. This just reflects a new nationwide tolerance for property crime, mind you, which, surprise, surprise, has led to its rise.
There’s also a new story about a man who defecated in a San Francisco grocery store aisle (there are pictures), but who undoubtedly won’t be prosecuted. This also just reflects a larger pattern. As the city’s newly-elected, radical leftist district attorney Chesa Boudin recently said, unabashedly, “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes,” The American Mirror reported.
“Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted,” he continued. “Many of these crimes are still being prosecuted; we have a long way to go to decriminalize poverty and homelessness.”
Of course, cease prosecuting quality-of-life crimes and the quality of life declines. It’s a recipe for descent into Third Worldism.
Meanwhile, flaunting its priorities, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in September to brand the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization.”
The officially sanctioned social breakdown is attended by language manipulation designed to legitimize the lunacy. Consider that when I was a kid, men living on the streets were called “bums”; being reimagined as “homeless” is no longer good enough, however. Now some want to call their encampments — a new fixture in many Golden State areas — “curbside communities.”
The bottom line is that while Democrats proclaim when impeaching Trump that “no one is above the law,” everyone is above the law except those they want below the law (or, let’s say, under the boot of the lawless). Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed this reality well in a June segment (video below), mentioning, among other examples, that our country’s “20 million illegal aliens” are certainly above the law.
Of course, the creation of frivolous laws, ignoring of important ones, and selective application of all law undermines respect for law — as does favoring foreigners over citizens.
It’s not a recipe for unity but division, and it’s how republics are lost.
Image: screenshot from video on Twitter
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
