My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

Bob’s story is the kind of story happening all over America and in Wisconsin in cities where politicians and activists are tearing down civil order. Under the destructive belief that crime is a symptom of social ills in which the criminals are the greatest victims, the leftist push for deincarceration, no bail release, decriminalization, record expungement, and, most recently, defunding the police is rotting the core out of America’s cities.

 

The crime issue is not about the criminals. It is about the victims. It is about the vast majority of good people who get up every day, follow the rules, go to work, raise their children, volunteer in their neighborhoods, and write out their story in the history of their community. These are the people who suffer when criminals are loosed to savage cities. These are the Bobs who are the heart and soul of their cities and are being forced to consider leaving their beloved cities to the free-range criminal horde.

 

These are the people who Governor Tony Evers forsook when he vetoed the “Fund the Police” bill passed by the Legislature. In a move to push back against the “defund the police” movement, the bill would have simply reduced state aid to local governments that choose to defund their police by the same amount and redistributing the money to other local governments. While it would not have prevented local governments from defunding their police, it would have discouraged it and prevented state taxpayers from subsidizing local government leaders who are actively turning their communities over to criminals.

 

Wisconsin needs strong cities, but no amount of money or public policy can fix a city that has been eviscerated by crime. When the social fabric is rended and civil order collapses, the good people that Wisconsin’s cities need to thrive will simply leave. All that will remain is a wasteland of missed opportunity.