"Someone just walks up and cold-cocks someone in the face totally unannounced, totally unprovoked."
That's how Hackensack, New Jersey, police Capt. Thomas Salcedo describes the so-called "knockout game."
But it goes further than that.
Often the brazen, random and black-on-white racial attacks are recorded on video and posted on social media sites by accomplices.
They have taken place all over the country for more than two years, as chronicled in the book, "White Girl Bleed A Lot," by Colin Flaherty.
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For most of that time, Flaherty was virtually alone in reporting the trend. Not only was he alone, but he was attacked for racism and bigotry just for noticing – along with the one news organization that dared to publish his voluminous reports and the company that dared to publish his book.
Now everyone has noticed – and the politicians are at work to solve the problem.
New state laws are being drafted all over the country that will provide stiffer penalties for such attacks.
But is that really the solution?
Isn't it already against the law everywhere to commit assault and battery?
Aren't there already enough laws on the books against violent crimes?
Is that the only way to deter anti-social behavior?
The mark of a self-governing society is one in which most people have a sense of right and wrong. They have share a moral code that unprovoked violent attacks on neighbors doesn't follow the scriptural adage, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Without that common bond, no laws can hold a society together. You can never have enough policemen to protect society from those who feel no sense of accountability to a higher power – to a higher law,
America is in an advanced stage of moral decay.
With what's going on in the streets of cities all over America – and on full display in Ferguson, Missouri – the signs are unmistakable. It's not just racial polarization. It's what the Bible frequently characterizes as everyman doing "that which was right in his own eyes."
But it's even worse than that in America today.
Those responsible for reporting these events seem incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, too. It's still a small minority of people who are hopelessly out of control, violently victimizing others without apparent rational motivation, but people in positions of power and influence are unwilling or unable to recognize the signs of a failing culture.
You simply can't police a society into good behavior.
People need a moral compass, not just the threat of incarceration.
But unified codes of behavior are illusory. They are fast breaking down. From the earliest ages, children are taught that they are the products of unguided natural selection and random mutations rather than creations of a God who made them in His own image.
Without that belief and that consensus or even that possibility, who can honestly define right and wrong?
The only thing that can fill that vacuum is more police power. That leads inevitably to government alone playing god with the rules constantly shifting like a foundation on sand.
America is on a precipice – not just from the "knockout game" or the irrationality and hysteria on display from Ferguson to Washington.
We are adrift. We are like a rudderless ship. The guiding principles that held our nation together are breaking down. They are being torn asunder.
Even those who claim to be believers in God are not following His prescriptions for spiritual renewal. Thus, they cannot be the "salt" that preserves a society from total decay and degradation. You simply can't have what our founders tried to bequeath to us as a "self-governing society" without that preservative.
We need a wake-up call.
That requires truthful and courageous reporting of what's actually happening in America and around the world.
We need to understand man alone cannot cure his own fallen and sinful nature.
And there needs to be widespread and sincere repentance by believers for failing our neighbors by not putting God first in our own lives and for not being the salt and light we are called to be.
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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