Grievance Politics Is Destroying Civilized Society

By MatthewBoose @ American Greatness

Arguably, the greatest indictment of leftism is its preference for the vagrant and the criminal over the law-abiding citizen and victim. In politics, there are all kinds of disagreements about the role and scope of the state, but the one thing the state must do is protect the innocent. Without security, there is anarchy. And where there is anarchy, the state can command neither legitimacy nor respect. 

Yet racial idolaters on the Left have pushed society to forgo basic expectations of public order and civilized conduct. The Left has a warped infatuation with society’s most entitled, recalcitrant, and destructive elements.

Their latest martyr is a lunatic named Jordan Neely, who was killed while threatening commuters in Manhattan. The man, portrayed by sympathetic media as a “Michael Jackson impersonator,” was throwing garbage at people and making vaguely threatening statements about his willingness to go to prison for life. A reasonable person would feel afraid in this situation, as passengers doubtless did. A heroic vigilante intervened. The Left has demonized the vigilante for his “barbaric” supposed “lynching,” but this gets it precisely backward.

In places like New York City, criminals are a protected class. Just days ago, a homeless man stabbed a commuter with an ice pick. Jordan Neely himself had 42 prior arrests and an open warrant for assaulting a 67-year-old woman at the time of his death. He is widely reported to have been a menace to the safety of others, in short, a net negative on society. But rather than permit the “injustice” of locking up violent blacks, governments in places like New York empower criminals to terrorize innocents. This is called “social justice,” and it’s happening everywhere.

Roving caravans of “youths” in Chicago regularly riot and loot with impunity. The city wrings its hands over a lack of “resources” in the hood and stages ineffectual “awareness” campaigns. Civilized society is extorted, literally and morally. The left will always find a way to justify the criminals and blame the real victims, whose cries for justice are drowned out by the endless wailing of black entitlement. We are often told that the politics of “white grievance” is transforming America into some kind of authoritarian state, but the opposite is true.

It is impossible to have civilization when it is a crime to hold members of a protected class accountable for their conduct. In Manhattan on last week, justice momentarily took the reins away from “social justice.” The normal course of state-sanctioned disorder was disrupted by a brave onlooker, who very well could have ignored the threat, like most commuters have been conditioned to do. Instead, he chose to act at great risk to his safety, reputation, and freedom.

And of course, the media does their part: