In 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky published his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment.  The book essentially was a morality play.  The notion that punishment would follow the commission of a crime was not a new concept.  It was founded upon Judeo-Christian religious values.  After one has sinned, one must atone.  Those values were engrafted into our laws, and respect for the law was the underpinning of society.  Thomas Hobbes understood this in the 15th Century when, in Leviathan, he observed that men create governments and enact laws in order to preserve the fabric of society.  Without them, there exists no society, but instead a State of Nature, chaos, a war of every man against every man.  For hundreds of years, this was an accepted concept.  “The law’s the law.”  “Do the crime and you do the time.”  In the early 1930’s, the U.S. imposed production standards for motion pictures.  They could depict crime and criminals, but at the end, the law must triumph, and the guilty must be punished.  Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart all had good runs, but ultimately were done in by their comrades, or the government.  And when they weren’t killed, off they went to prison, to “pay their debt to society.”  That’s the way it was, and our leaders understood that that’s the way it had to be if society was to survive and prosper.  Thomas Hobbes said it best when he explained why Man must avoid the State of Nature.  “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  That’s not a pretty picture, but I fear it’s the world which we may be ushering in should we continue on the course we have been on these last few years.  We’ve lost our way.  We’ve abandoned any concept of morality, and thus the notion that some actions are acceptable, while others are unacceptable.  In arts, culture, communications and personal behavior, anything goes, up to and including criminal behavior.  It’s a conundrum.  The same Woke imbeciles who seek to steal your personal freedoms to speak your mind, and control your own affairs, seem willing to grant license to law-breaking rabble to do as they please.  As with all the paving stones on the road to Hell, these imbeciles believe they are well-intentioned.   They were fixing a non-existent problem, systemic racism.  I’ve explained this before, but in a nutshell, I live in a County where the Prosecutor, judges, police chiefs, jurors,  cops, and witnesses are predominantly “people of color.”  So, if criminal defendants are being railroaded by systemic racism, somebody has to explain to me how white supremecists got all these minority players go along with the plan.  Obviously, there is no plan, and no systemic racism.  If a particular criminal defendant was prejudiced by bias or some legal error, we have a court system which is ready and able to right that wrong.  That’s the work I do every day.  But that said, the Woke fantasyland view of the justice system encouraged us to defund the police, handcuff the police, cast the police as the criminals, no cash bail, and Woke prosecutors who refuse to enforce the laws on the books.  These misguided policies have led to the mess we now have.  Police officers reduced to observers of crime, reluctant to do their jobs for fear of losing their jobs, their property and their freedom.  City streets which have been abandoned to the mob.  Let’s focus on New York City.  The city that used to be The Big Apple, The City That Never Sleeps, and The Crossroads of the World is practically unrecognizable.  Subway ridership is down by almost half, while subway crime is up 60%.  If you don’t get robbed, killed, or mugged by a gang of women wearing skin-tight green jumpsuits, the extra added attraction is hoards of mentally deranged homeless people, who are liable to throw you under a train.  If you make it to your stop and ascend to street level, things do not improve.  The no bail system permits the same people to commit crimes all day, every day, and if arrested, be released right back onto the street to do it again.  There are stories of criminals with 40, 50, even more than 100 arrests continually exiting the revolving door.  And when these people get to trial, if they ever do, prosecutors are willing to downgrade serious, and violent crimes to minor offenses which keep the predators on the street.  Workers don’t want to return to the office.  Residents are reluctant to venture out.  More than 330,000 productive citizens have left New York City since 2020.  These are the people who did the work and paid the taxes.  How many restaurants and other businesses have closed as a result?  How many stores simply closed the doors because looters were permitted to steal, just a little at a time, until there was no business left?  And when the police won’t or can’t protect the poor unfortunates who remain, nothing is left but vigilante justice, which is no justice at all.  We’re not there yet, but we’re fast approaching Hobbes’ State of Nature.  Everything he predicted in 1651 appears before us.  No industry, no culture, no arts, letters or society.  Nothing left but the predators and their prey.  It’s all because Wokeism has set out to remake the world by collapsing our society.  When you convince people that they owe no debt to society, even if they commit crime, but that society owes them a living, no good can come of it.  There are signs that people have had enough Woke nonsense, and are ready to return to a world where actions have consequences.  On November 8, vote like your life depends on it, because it just might.  Don’t vote Democrat or Republican, vote for sanity.