I think it can be surmised that crime has attended mankind since the beginning of time. 

The forces of chaos are built into the very fabric of the universe. 

Good and evil have been perched on our shoulders, whispering in our ears, since the earliest generations of man. 

The Summerian people wrote the first criminal laws, circa 2100 B.C., where they even made a distinction between civil and criminal wrongdoings. 

Was Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden the first criminal act? 

Did not Caine kill his brother Abel? 

Were not the Greek gods constantly warring with one another and committing the grossest acts of violence? 

The oldest documented murder occurred 430,000 years ago. That’s what you might call the ultimate “cold” case. 

Paradoxically, though, in the healthiest societies, the level of law enforcement needed is minimal because most citizens behave in a law-abiding manner. 

Ultimately the moral impulse springs naturally  from the hearts and minds of people. That may sound like so much wishful thinking, but it is an ideal that has been achieved in the past.

Philosophy aside, many good citizens want crime controlled — and the problem of crime in America is a serious and growing problem. 

In my recent columns I have used humor as a device to expose the ludicrous nature of “woke” culture, but this is such an important issue that it does not lend itself well to the lightness of humor. 

To go down the woke rabbit hole is, first and foremost, a denial of our individual sense of empowerment. 

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

― William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”

In my view, being “woke” is a celebration of victimhood and places blame on others and outside forces for the perceived lack of “social justice” in our society and for the existence of “systemic racism.”

Police departments across the country have become an undeserved target of that blame. 

To be fair, I would point out that crime in America was on the rise long before the rise of “woke” culture. In the big cities, crime has been out of control for many many decades — and that is no FOX News statistic. 

Crime and drug trafficking have been metastasizing throughout the entire country. Criminal gangs, which were once the scourge of big cities, have now infected small-town America. 

The largely Democratic leadership of the big urban centers has poured billions of dollars into the cities — and yet they have continued to deteriorate at every level of society. 

Even so, let’s be clear, “woke culture” greatly exacerbates crime and accelerates our national disintegration. 

To have any semblance of a civil society, under today’s deteriorating conditions, we need to maintain civil order — and defunding the police is certainly not the answer. 

All one needs to do is look at Hendersonville, Flat Rock or Brevard, which seem to be maintaining a much higher level of law and order. 

We can find varying statistics for crime in these cities compared to Asheville, yet one need only walk down their main streets to see and feel the difference. 

Rising crime is a serious problem in Asheville. People are dying. The Democrats have tried to play the “FOX Card” in denying its reality. The stories and opinions offered by FOX News are a favorite foil for angry Democrats to blame others for the problems they themselves have created. 

FOX is the kill switch that ends all debate. 

Oh, well…..it’s on FOX, what do you expect? 

As if that sentiment immediately cancels the reality of what is going on right before our eyes. 

I guess rising crime in Asheville is just another “conspiracy theory.” 

Note this: both WLOS (News 13) and the Citizen Times have flagged rising crime in Asheville as a real problem. Every time I hear of a violent crime being committed in Asheville, no one seems to want to connect it with the defunding of police or with the fact that well over 80 officers from the Asheville Police Department have retired since 2020. 

Do you think that the rise in crime might be related to this? 

Just suggesting this is a crime in Asheville — for which you might be “canceled.”

My advice to Asheville’s citizens is that they wait no longer for a solution by finally standing up, once and for all, and voting this feckless city government out of office. 

That would be a good start to solving the crime problem. 

Unfortunately, the real problem is the people of Asheville themselves. It is easy to blame the city government, but the fact is that defunding the police is not the worst part of the problem. It is the lack of public respect for the police that is killing the civil enterprise of a once vibrant city. 

Because we are in the heat of an election season, the corrupt Democratic machine that runs the city needs to shut down the debate — just turn off FOX news... and the problem will go away.

If its citizens continue to deny reality, then reality is going to eventually catch up with them — possibly at the end of a smoking gun barrel...  or the tip of a sharp knife.