What do you call it when 9 people are killed and 52 wounded in Chicago?  Labor Day weekend.  And what can you say about a governor and mayor who, despite all that bloodshed, not only refuse federal help, but rally their citizens to resist that help?  A former Chicago police official opined that Democrats fear Trump stepping in because it exposes their inability to control the chaos they’ve enabled.

Like in many blue cities, Chicago’s violent crime rate is a feature, not a bug, of soft-on-crime policies.  Yet, hilariously, a Chicago Democrat is begging Trump to save the city, proving that even some leftists know the ship’s sinking.

How about a slow clap for Senator Tim Kaine, who boldly declared in a Senate hearing that your rights come from the government, not some pesky Creator?  Yes, the man who was almost a heartbeat away from the presidency in 2016 thinks the Declaration of Independence is just a quaint suggestion.  Kaine called the idea that rights are God-given “extremely troubling” and likened it to Iran’s theocratic regime.  Senator Ted Cruz, bless his heart, nearly fell out of his chair, reminding Kaine that Thomas Jefferson, a fellow Virginian, wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”  But no, Kaine’s out there suggesting your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is just a government-issued coupon, revocable at the next bureaucratic whim.

In some places (blue cities!), America’s moral fiber is coming apart at the seams, and the clowns are running the show.  The phrase “the beatings will continue until morale improves” isn’t just a snarky quip from a disgruntled pirate captain — it’s the unofficial slogan of today’s leftist overlords, who seem hell-bent on proving that government is the alpha and omega of your rights, your safety, and your sanity.  Their god is Government, they worship in the Church of Climate Change, and their sacraments are abortion and transgenderism.

Family structures are crumbling, single-parent households are spiking, and marriage rates are plummeting.  This is economic poison.  Kids from broken homes are more likely to flunk classes, drop out of school, turn to crime, or live off welfare.  This costs taxpayers billions.  Meanwhile, the elites keep telling them to “live your truth” while ignoring the truth that stable families build stable economies.  Conservatives need to keep swinging that big stick of traditional values until leftists remember what made our society work.  That might mean shaming deadbeat dads or sanctimonious influencers.

America, at least in red cities and states, is still a land of opportunity.  There are, of course, problems.  There’s skyrocketing national debt, currently at $36.93 trillion and rising.  According to the U.S. Treasury, the rate of increase last year averaged $5.13 billion per day, $213.61 million per hour, $3.56 million per minute, or $59,335.23 per second.  We need to stop coddling people, slash entitlements, deregulate business, and let the free market sort out the winners from the whiners.  Decades of reckless spending and a government addicted to handouts in exchange for votes have us teetering on, if not already over, the fiscal edge.

At one time, American schools produced innovators and builders.  Now, too many schools are teaching kids how to be “woke” rather than bother with academics.  They’ve produced a generation that can’t change a tire or find their own state on a map but can lecture us on microagressions and name all the pronouns in the rainbow.  This poses a national security risk.  When our engineers can’t engineer and our historians think 1776 was a TikTok trend, we’re not exactly primed for global dominance.

We desperately need to return to rigorous standards, teach kids how to think critically instead of parroting left-wing dogma, and emphasize vocational training.  Not every kid needs to go to college, and it’s probably doing many of them more harm than good anyway.  We used to teach Latin and Greek in high school.  Now we’re teaching remedial English and arithmetic in college.

Our local, state, and federal bureaucracies are the ultimate stick-wielders, smacking down anyone who dreams of a better life.  Overregulation strangles small businesses, and tax policies punish success.  Trust in our institutions is at an all-time low.  What a shocker.  Our politicians treat the Constitution like a suggestion box.  We need to starve the beast by cutting federal spending, devolve power to the states, and let people keep more of their hard earned cash.

They’ve spent decades pretending that actions don’t have consequences and glorifying dysfunction instead of rewarding virtue.  Life isn’t fair, but it’s a lot fairer when you play by the rules that built civilization in the first place.

The leftist playbook is a masterclass in self-inflicted wounds.  The beatings will continue until Americans rediscover that liberty, safety, and prosperity come from principles older than any senator’s ego or mayor’s tantrum.

Until then, grab your popcorn.  This circus isn’t closing anytime soon.

Image: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.