The Patriot Post® · America's Crime Problem

By Gary Bauer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/81587-americas-crime-problem-2021-07-27

Every day the news brings more disturbing headlines of spiking crime all over the country. This isn’t just petty crime like vandalism. It’s vicious assaults on women, the elderly and children. It’s murder, rape and mob violence. Just consider this headline: “915 Shootings In The Past Week Across The U.S., With 430 People Dead.”

A year ago, far-left politicians like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, backed by the media, the BLM movement and even Joe Biden, said the police were the problem. They demanded that we defund the police, and many big cities did. The results were predictable, leading to headlines like the one above.

Now frightened citizens are demanding more police. I’m all in favor of refunding the police and ending the demonization of the brave men and women who keep us safe. But our challenge is greater than that.

The same leftists who are waging war on the police now have been waging war against biblical values for decades. Long before we kicked the cops out of inner-city neighborhoods, we kicked God out of our schools. Before the left defunded the police, it was divesting from Judeo-Christian values.

The left loves the slogan, “No justice, no peace.” A more accurate slogan is, “No God, no peace.”

Back in the 1950s, when we still had prayer in schools, a campaign was launched to display the Ten Commandments in local communities. Over the last 25 years, the radical, secular left has tried to identify and remove every one of those displays. Apparently, the left sees something wrong with warnings against murder, lying and stealing.

The left owes America an apology. It’s hostility toward faith hasn’t made for a better America. Far from it.

We need to restore the Ten Commandments in every public square and in every public school. And we need to teach them in our homes again.

I continue to work daily with people in and out of government to protect religious liberty. We are regularly talking to top pastors in the U.S., urging them to confront these issues from the pulpit.

Coddling Communist China

Democrat uber-lobbyist Tony Podesta has been hired by Huawei, a telecom giant closely tied to the Chinese communist regime, to lobby the Biden Administration. Tony Podesta, and his brother John, are very close to the Bidens.

But lobbying for communist China isn’t just a problem on the left. Former Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter is also lobbying for another Chinese tech company, Hikvision, which makes surveillance cameras and has been implicated in communist China’s brutal crackdown against the Uyghurs.

This is what Donald Trump referred to in his inaugural address when he talked about Washington politicians prospering while jobs and factories were shipped overseas. Main Street got boarded up while Washington’s K Street grifters got richer and richer.

A lot of people in the Swamp, including some establishment Republicans, did not like Trump’s disparaging references to Washington. George W. Bush claimed he didn’t understand what Trump meant. But just like Podesta and Vitter, you’d be astonished by the long list of people who have gotten rich while representing communist China’s interests in the United States.

Huawei is not just a typical company. It is implicated in all kinds of censorship and oppression. Under pressure from the Trump/Pence Administration, Europe eventually caught on, and several countries are scrambling to get Huawei out of the 5G systems they are building.

But the Biden Administration is attempting to reset relations with communist China. As I reported last week, it wants to strike a deal on climate change.

So, the Biden White House dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to China, where she reportedly told her Chinese counterparts that we’re not trying to contain communist China. We just want to establish “guardrails and parameters” for our future relationship.

The Chinese communists weren’t impressed. They once again slammed America’s record on human rights, called on the U.S. to change its “highly misguided mind-set and dangerous policy,” and issued a list of demands or “errors” the U.S. must correct.

China’s communist leaders believe they are rising power in the world, and they are intent on replacing the United States as the world’s sole superpower. Earlier this month, as he celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi declared that China would “crack the heads and spill the blood” of its enemies.

As long as we have quislings like Podesta and Vitter willing to do the bidding of the Chinese communists for the right price, such statements will likely be proven correct.

Every American business should get its factories out of communist China. Every American lobbying firm and law firm should announce that it will no longer represent the interests of a nation that is engaged in genocide, religious persecution, and massive spying and the stealing voluminous amounts of information from the United States. That really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Exposing communist China’s persecution of Christians as well as their threat to our freedoms was a major focus of my work on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Liberal Injustice

The left loves to talk about justice. There’s social justice. There’s climate justice. There’s economic justice. But what about just plain old justice without the left-wing modifiers? That seems to be in short supply these days. For example:

  • Three accused murderers have walked free because far-left prosecutors in St. Louis aren’t doing their jobs. And I mean that literally. The prosecutors didn’t show up for court hearings.

  • The Biden/Harris Justice Department announced that Gov. Andrew Cuomo won’t face justice for placing COVID patients in nursing homes, where the disease killed thousands, and covering up his crimes. The liberal governors of Michigan and Pennsylvania are off the hook too.

  • The Justice Department is also dropping charges against five communist Chinese “researchers” who lied about their connections to the Chinese military. Click here to see two of the suspects in their Chinese military uniforms.

It seems the left is just too busy prosecuting a few hundred conservatives who entered the Capitol on January 6th to focus on these issues.

Liberal Double Standards

Last week, I asked how badly Hunter Biden might be compromised by his business dealings in communist China. That’s not just sarcasm. It’s a serious question.

Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have received credible reports that Hunter Biden told the Secret Service he didn’t want protection when traveled to communist China, but he took it on trips to Europe and in the United States. Grassley and Johnson want to know why Hunter Biden ditched the Secret Service when he was traveling in China.

As Sen. Johnson put it, “That’s the $64,000 question. What does China know about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s business dealings and that vast web of foreign financial entanglements in China?”

If Hunter Biden was trying to evade U.S. law enforcement agents, that would lend credibility to the concerns that he has been compromised. Not surprisingly, the Secret Service is not cooperating with Grassley and Johnson.

On a separate matter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not cooperating either. Five members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee have sent a letter to the CDC demanding information on what role the big teachers’ unions played in dictating the policies for reopening our schools.

Sen. Johnson said that when five members of the Homeland Security Committee request information, the law requires cooperation. But so far, the CDC has refused to provide the requested details.

Once again, the double standard is infuriating. If Trump family members engaged in all kinds of questionable business dealings overseas and asked the Secret Service to look the other way, “whistleblowers” would be coming out of the woodwork and the media would be howling for blood.

If some conservative special interest group played a role in dictating COVID policies, the CDC would be leaking like a sieve, and there would be non-stop reports of government corruption.

Senators Grassley and Johnson are doing excellent work exposing the Biden Administration’s corruption. Both are up for reelection next year, but so far neither senator has committed to running again. Campaign for Working Families will do everything we can to ensure we hold these seats and retake the Senate in 2022.