Savages vs. Civilization
Karmelo Anthony—his first name sounds like some off-brand 99 Cent Store nougat confection—is going to prison for 35 years, and he is relatively lucky. He is lucky he does not live in a society that treats monsters appropriately. A civilized society does not tolerate his brand of sociopathy. It executes such criminals—not only as righteous retribution and not only as an example to others, but as an act of societal hygiene. For a millennium, Europe hanged, beheaded, or otherwise dispatched about 1 percent of its male population every year for various crimes, and you know what? After a while, there were not that many more criminals left. European society was remarkably peaceful as far as crime, if not as far as war. But we moderns decided to go another way. We decided this was too harsh. We decided this was too mean. So, we decided to tolerate nonsense, and it is no surprise what has happened. The kindness to criminals has, inevitably, turned into cruelty to the innocent.
But the defenders of this kind of moral illiteracy are shameless, and in the wake of Karmelo Anthony’s just conviction, they have been not just stupid but loud. We have been bombarded by outright evil attempting to excuse his crime. They advocate special rules for black men that everybody else must honor, which involves letting them misbehave but never confronting them about it, or they might murder you. All of which is just fine with the critics, but it is not just fine with the rest of us. Karmelo Anthony bought into this morally bankrupt foolishness, and now two lives are over, and two families are ruined—though Karmelo Anthony’s family seems to be doing OK with its GoFundMe.
There is a culture clash in America going on between models of public behavior. The primarily European model of public consideration for others is one in which you do not try to dominate public spaces and where you are aware of and considerate of other people who are present. And then there is the Third World model, which we are all experiencing more and more, and we are getting pretty damn........
