My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time
To let the punishment fit the crime
The punishment fit the crime.
– Gilbert and Sullivan, “The Mikado”

Crime.
President Obama responded to Baton Rouge massacre of police by stating that they can make the job of being a cop safer by “admitting their failures.” One might ask why Obama doesn’t make his own job easier by admitting his failures. But this assumes (1) that Obama recognizes that he has had any failures, and (2) that he actually wants the job of police to be made easier. Neither assumption is supported by evidence.
Nor is there any evidence that Hillary Clinton differs in a significant way from the Obama agenda. If one knew nothing else about the differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, this would be enough to make a decision.
Throughout his presidency, Obama has expressed a consistently anti-police attitude. Remember how he claimed that Boston police had acted “stupidly” when they saw a man breaking into a house? The man identified himself with a Harvard faculty card, but not with a driver’s license listing his actual address. Yes, the man turned out to be Professor Henry Louis Gates, a prominent black academic.
That didn’t help the police to learn whether the man belonged in that house. But it did help the public to learn that their president did not support the police. From the Gates affair in the first year of Obama’s presidency to the Dallas and Baton Rouge massacres in the last year, Obama has been consistent in his anti-police stance.
The Monday after the Baton Rouge triple cop-killing, I listened to the radio all morning. News reports came every half hour. All of them mentioned that the murderer was a former Marine, almost surely an irrelevant fact. But not one mentioned that he was a former member of the Nation of Islam, likely a very relevant fact.
And whom did Democrats choose to address their convention? The mother of Michael Brown, the 6-foot 5-inch, 285-pound strong-arm robber of a skinny Arab shopkeeper and attacker of a police officer. Now there was an admirable role model for Democrats to hold up to young people. Everyone from President Obama to Black Lives Matter crowds chanted “Ferguson” and “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
We all have a crucial choice to make. We can use facts to calm things down. Or we can use lies to stir things up.
Drugs.
Currently more young Americans smoke marijuana than tobacco. Those who demonize tobacco must be proud of themselves. The surgeon general declared, “One puff on that cigarette could be the one that causes your heart attack.” One puff?
While pundits preach the horrors of tobacco, they remain almost silent on the dangers of marijuana. Children sent to the hospital when they ate marijuana-laced cookies or candies? No problem – at least they weren’t exposed to second-hand smoke. That is, they weren’t exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke. Is second-hand pot smoke dangerous, especially to children? Activists are oddly uninterested, but a study shows that it is more dangerous than second-hand tobacco smoke.
Did you know that marijuana smoke contains most of the same carcinogens in tobacco smoke? Did you know that heavy pot smokers have a doubled incidence of lung cancer? No? I don’t blame you. To discover this vital information, you must read scientific journals, but the mainstream media remain oddly silent. Why?
Nicotine increases alertness. Perhaps that is why cigarette smoking became so common during World War II. Marijuana induces sedation. The net result is that we are exchanging an unhealthful substance that increases alertness for an unhealthful substance that decreases it. In an era of motor vehicles and electronic devices of increasing complexity, this seems foolish.
Would you rather your surgeon smoked a cigarette or a joint before operating on you? What about your airline pilot? Your lawyer? Your accountant? Your auto mechanic? Your computer technician? I’ll go further. Would you rather your doctor had smoked tobacco or marijuana when he was in medical school? (Remember that lecture on coronary artery disease? No? Oh well, let’s Google it.)
Immigration.
One day my wife, a psychologist, walked in holding an e-mail and began reading it to me. I soon stopped her − the thing was utterly incomprehensible. The message described new government regulations on how to prepare reports on patients.
Having worked in a large bureaucracy, I thought I was fairly good at interpreting bureaucratese. But this e-mail was so dense and convoluted that I was unable to extract anything important. The message was from someone with limited knowledge of English.
That’s the future. Uncontrolled immigration is bringing foreign-born people with limited English skills into the labor force. Threat of lawsuits causes personnel directors in businesses and government agencies to hire these people.
Besides, foreign-language radio and TV stations and newspapers have become common. Immigrants have less incentive to learn English. They can live, work, be entertained, and even vote in their native tongue. Attempts to require ballots or other official documents to be printed in English are met with cries of “xenophobia” and “immigrant bashing.” This leaves immigrants as second-class citizens, but who cares? We don’t have to be caring – we just have to appear caring.
Meanwhile, the government accelerates its output of voluminous regulations. Take ObamaCare. No one seems to know exactly what it contains. No one seems to know even how many pages it comprises. Is it 2100? Is it 2400? Or is it 2700? All these figures appeared in news reports.
Yes, that’s the future. Colossal amounts of bureaucratese will be “explained” − and enforced − by people with limited English skills. And if the stress of this difficult job is too great, they can relax by smoking pot. Have a nice day.
The bottom line.
The Mikado’s idea of the punishment fitting the crime is just what we need now:
● Let the anti-police activists experience a street mugging or a home invasion. And let them be forced to handle it on their own. The police, intimidated by hostile politicians, hostile prosecutors, and hostile media, will respond slowly – so the criminal will be gone by the time they arrive. Writing a report is a lot safer than dealing with violent offenders.
● Let the “health” gurus who scream about the evils of tobacco, while ignoring the problems of marijuana, be placed in the hands of doctors, nurses, paramedics, lawyers, accountants, auto mechanics, airline pilots, police officers, and government officials who smoke a joint every night to relax − and sometimes in the morning before work.
● Let the immigration “rights” advocates be placed in the hands of similar people who have limited knowledge of English, but who must understand complex instructions that were written by other people who also have limited knowledge of English − but whose native tongue is different. Let their brakes be repaired by a native speaker of Spanish who must read instructions written by a native speaker of Chinese. Remember the Tower of Babel? How did that work out?
● If the immigration “rights” advocates are also anti-tobacco crusaders, let their brakes be repaired by a native speaker of Spanish who must read instructions written by a native speaker of Chinese − and who is also a stoner. But don’t worry, the mechanic doesn’t touch tobacco. That thought should be a great consolation when the brakes fail on a long downgrade.
● And if the immigration “rights” advocates and anti-tobacco crusaders are also proponents of ObamaCare, when they are taken to the hospital after the car crash, let them be told by a nurse practitioner (in broken English) that they should take a pain pill (if they can get one) instead of having expensive surgery to repair their injuries.
The self-anointed “elite” pushed unlimited immigration, legal and illegal, as well as unequal trade agreements. Ordinary people lost jobs, while the “elite” worked in prestigious offices. Ordinary kids were crowded into failing public schools, while the children of the “elite” attended private schools. Ordinary people were crowded into public-hospital emergency rooms, while the “elite” saw doctors in fashionable office buildings. Ordinary people were bedeviled by rising crime rates, while the “elite” lived and worked in upscale neighborhoods.
But now, the “elite” may begin to feel the results of their reckless policies. The Mikado would be pleased. It’s called karma. The “elite” should remember that Justice doesn’t just carry a balance − she also carries a sword.

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