We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
Chicago Mayor Johnson is an advocate of looting. Mass looting. He defends and excuses criminal organized theft as “an outbreak of incredible frustration and anguish” caused by “a failed racist system.” In short, tantrums in the form of mob violence and theft are to be expected. As one overloaded looter shouted to a news crew, "This is reparations!"
Highly organized gangs apparently think it's morally virtuous to steal from large retailers. They are developing extremely sophisticated plans for how to rapidly pillage and plunder major retailers. The best of these plans clean out a retailer in just minutes from invasion to retreat. The stolen goods are then resold online or in the streets, and the total losses are huge and growing, largely because the thieves are praised by virtue-signalers, and ignored by police and judges. Losses to honest businesses? Staggering...and growing.
TARGET reported $763 million in theft loss last fiscal year. They estimate this year's loss to be $1.2 billion. That's only one chain.
Walmart decided to shut 17 of its stores across nine states after CEO Doug McMillon warned in December that theft was the highest it’s ever been around the country and if it did not slow down, stores would have to close.
So far, more than 2,600 businesses have left downtown Portland. An 83-year-old Vietnam veteran felt safer walking the streets of pagan Saigon than he does walking the streets of Christian Portland.
Or maybe Portland is no longer Christian, because Portland no longer hears ethical truth from Christian churches, like, "thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal, and thou shalt not kill."
A few weeks ago, an image went viral. In Belgium a migrant used the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to cook an omelette. For many, the desecration brought to mind a quote from French author Jean Raspail, written in 1973 in his novel Camp of the Saints, about a sudden invasion of Muslim, Indian and African migrants into France:
“Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door.”
“Beware of two errors: despising the world God sustains, or worshipping the culture He restrains.”
— Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace Vol. 1, Ch. 30
"[Successful NY Mayoral candidate] Mamdani built his campaign on the infrastructure of the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA and its city allies can dispatch activists across New York and, with a network of progressive partner organizations, can mobilize young people, get out the vote, and do the work of door-to-door politics.
"We saw this dynamic many times in the twentieth century: socialists rise to power, their policies degrade the quality of life, and, as they enter the endgame, they tighten their grip on power and offload resentments onto their ideological, racial, and economic enemies.
"...the twentieth century taught us that left-wing voters have extraordinary defenses against reality."
-- Christopher Rufo
