Have you noticed that the more government there is, the more problems we have?

The government claims jurisdiction over everything you do.  Yet prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent criminals, and judges increasingly refuse to sentence those convicted.

Columnist Doug Casey points to the obvious root of this evil: America has lost its knowledge of right and wrong.

Despite the USA's Leviathan of armed government authority, crime spirals out of control.  Major retailers are abandoning cities because they are being robbed and shoplifted into bankruptcy — while police do nothing about it.  The lawlessness that began with flash mobs shoplifting at dime stores has escalated to the ritziest retailers on a vast scale.  Security guards stand by and watch it happen.  Carjacking is epidemic in inner cities.  Violence for violence's sake is erupting on public streets, in private businesses, and on public transportation.  People who have never been slaves demand reparations from people who never owned slaves.

To get your money, people who want it seem to think all they must do is demand that you hand it over.  If you refuse, you're deemed a bigot.  At this rate, your refusal will soon become a hate crime.  Think you have problems now?  Just wait until the police state accuses you of a hate crime.  That's one offense they take seriously.

If this insanity hasn't come to your neighborhood yet, you can bet it will.  What's going to stop it?  Police?

For a century, when our country confronted new problems such as these, the "fix" has been to add more government.  That poured gasoline on the fire.

That's what they did in Venezuela.  Not long ago, Venezuela was one of the world's most prosperous nations and for the most part law-abiding.  But it turned aggressively to Big Government socialism to fix what wasn't broken.

Today, Venezuelans scrounge garbage to find enough to eat.  Today, while Venezuela sits atop one of the world's largest oil reserves, its socialist economy is so broken that the country cannot refine the oil to create gasoline.  As Venezuelans' opportunities shrink, so does their world, unable as they are to get from here to there.  Once rich in agriculture, today Venezuela cannot produce enough to feed its people; 70% say they can't afford the scarce food that is available.  In the seven years ending in 2021, Venezuela's gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 75%.  In 20 years, Venezuela has gone from one of the world's most prosperous nations to a veritable hellhole.

The rest of Latin America has watched Venezuela circle the drain for decades.  The result?  Virtually every South American nation has adopted the same Big Government socialist approach to "fix" its domestic ills.

Socialism says government can manage your life better than you can.  To do this, socialism must become your master.  And as socialists since Lenin and Stalin demonstrated firsthand, what that means is that government favors the people doing the governing at the expense of everyone else, who pays the bills.

Adding to the grief, socialist governments only expand.  They do not shrink.  The bigger they get, the smaller you get.  Stalin's five-year plans and taking over private farms literally starved millions to death to feed fewer than the small private farms they replaced.

It's worth remembering that when things get worse, a socialist's "cure" is to add more socialism.

Casey also explains where we're headed if we do not change course.

The upshot: As a consequence of America losing its sense of right and wrong, bad guys run rampant.  And they are coming for you.  Think mobs stripping the shelves bare in retail stores, and carjackers taking at gunpoint the car you paid for.

These bad guys and thieves operate on the socialism principle: if they want it, they believe they have a right to take it, and they believe it's government's job to accommodate their desires.  Whom do you think our ever-expanding socialist, redistributive government will serve?  You or these entitlement-minded criminals?

"The bottom line is that we can expect crime to continue rising," Casey writes.  "And the State is now more the cause than the cure of the problem."

Mark Landsbaum is a Christian retired journalist, former investigative reporter, editorial writer, and columnist.  He also is a husband, father, grandfather, and Dodgers fan.  He can be reached at mark.landsbaum@gmail.com.

Image: British Library.