For much of modern political history, the most dangerous words in public policy have not been shouted slogans but soothing reassurances. They are the claims that certain policies are “compassionate,” “progressive,” or “humane,” offered without any serious accounting of how they actually affect the people forced to live under them. This pattern is particularly evident in the agenda of today’s Democratic Party, whose policy choices increasingly produce chaos and danger while being marketed as moral advances.
The central flaw is not malice so much as indifference to consequences. The pursuit of ideological purity has replaced the traditional liberal concern for social order, public safety, and the rule of law. The predictable result has been a deterioration of civil society — one that falls most heavily on those with the least ability to protect themselves.
Consider first the party’s enthusiastic support for “criminal justice reform” in the form of progressive prosecutors and judges who are openly hostile to enforcement. Across major cities, voters have been urged to elect district attorneys who treat incarceration as a moral failure rather than a necessary tool of public safety. These officials routinely decline to prosecute entire categories of crimes, downgrade felonies to misdemeanors, or release repeat offenders back into the communities they have already victimized.
The human cost of this experiment is rarely discussed by its advocates. It is not the affluent professionals living behind security systems and gated communities who bear the brunt of rising crime. It is working-class neighborhoods, disproportionately minority, where small businesses are looted, elderly residents are assaulted, and parents fear letting their children walk to school. When law enforcement retreats, predatory behavior does not politely stand down. It fills the vacuum.
Closely related is the push for cashless bail. The theory is appealing: no one should be jailed simply for being poor. But the reality is that bail exists not as punishment but as a mechanism to ensure court appearance and to protect the public from demonstrably dangerous individuals. When bail is eliminated or sharply restricted, judges are often forced to release offenders with lengthy arrest records — individuals who quickly reoffend, sometimes violently.
Again, the costs are borne by ordinary citizens, not by the policymakers who champion these reforms. A person assaulted by someone who should never have been released receives little comfort from learning that the system was trying to be fair. Fairness without safety is a luxury belief — affordable only to those insulated from its consequences.
California’s move to eliminate life without parole through measures such as the Youth Rehabilitation and Opportunity Act illustrates the same pattern. The idea that violent criminals should automatically be given new chances based on age or shifting social theories ignores a fundamental reality: some individuals have demonstrated, repeatedly and conclusively, that they are a permanent threat to others. A legal system that refuses to recognize this is not enlightened; it is reckless.
Public safety is further undermined by sanctuary city policies and categorical opposition to immigration enforcement. The claim is that shielding illegal immigrants from federal authorities fosters trust. But in practice, it has meant protecting criminal illegal aliens — people who have already violated immigration law and then gone on to commit additional crimes.
Here again, the victims are overwhelmingly members of minority communities. When a repeat offender is released because local officials refuse to cooperate with federal enforcement, it is not an abstraction. It is a real person harmed, often by someone who had already been identified and could have been removed. To describe this as compassion is to redefine the word beyond recognition.
At the same time, the Democratic Party has embraced policies that deliberately blur long-standing boundaries in the name of social progress, such as allowing biological males into women’s private spaces. This is presented as a matter of inclusion, but it requires dismissing legitimate concerns about privacy, safety, and fairness — particularly for women and girls. A society that refuses to acknowledge obvious biological differences in policy design is not advancing justice; it is indulging ideology at the expense of reality.
Perhaps most revealing is the party’s response — or lack thereof — to the surge of antisemitic harassment and intimidation on elite university campuses. Jewish students have been threatened, blocked from facilities, and subjected to rhetoric that would be instantly condemned if directed at any other protected group. Yet institutional leaders and many elected officials have responded with moral ambiguity, procedural evasions, or outright silence.
This selective outrage exposes the underlying principle at work. Victimhood is not determined by harm suffered but by ideological alignment. Groups deemed politically inconvenient are afforded fewer protections, even when facing open hostility.
All of this unfolds alongside a relentless push for gun control legislation that would leave law-abiding citizens more vulnerable, not less. Criminals, by definition, do not obey gun laws. Disarming potential victims while simultaneously weakening policing and sentencing is not a safety strategy — it is an invitation to predators. The right to self-defense is most meaningful precisely when the state fails to provide protection. To curtail that right while engineering such failures is a profound moral contradiction.
What explains this pattern? One possibility is ideological romanticism — the belief that crime, violence, and disorder are primarily products of social injustice and that removing constraints will somehow redeem human behavior. This view has been repeatedly falsified by history, but it remains attractive to those insulated from its costs.
Another explanation is political calculation. Chaos can be useful. Social disorder creates dependency, fear, and a demand for centralized control. A population that feels unsafe is more easily persuaded to surrender liberties in exchange for promises of protection, even when those promises have already proven empty.
There is also a deeper cultural shift at work: a growing hostility toward the very idea of standards. Law enforcement, borders, prisons, sex distinctions, and even moral clarity are treated as relics of an oppressive past. But a society that abandons standards does not become freer — it becomes governed by force, often exercised by the least scrupulous.
The lesson is an old one. Good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes. Policies must be judged by what they do, not by how virtuous they sound. A political movement that consistently produces more crime, more fear, and more fragmentation while claiming moral superiority deserves skepticism, not deference.
Order is not the enemy of justice. It is its prerequisite. And a society that forgets this lesson will relearn it the hard way — at the expense of its most vulnerable citizens.
Jim Cardoza is the author of The Moral Superiority of Liberty and the founder of LibertyPen.com. Read more of his essays there.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 
