That patriot’s patriot, the winsome and wise Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu), is nothing if not tenacious. Even as crime is skyrocketing in cities that have cut police budgets and many of her own friends and allies have abandoned the suicidal “Defund the Police” initiative, Omar clings to it so indefatigably that one might even get the idea that she wants to see American cities engulfed in chaos. But surely the lovely Rep. Omar has only our best interests at heart, no?
No. On Tuesday, she appeared on MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Show and doubled down on her support of this corrosive movement when Hasan, who is slightly to the Left of Marx and Engels, asked her: “And how do you feel when you see even self-proclaimed progressives in your party like New York Congressman Ritchie Torres saying that Defund the Police is ‘dead’ in New York City and where many Democrats, including the new mayor, a former police captain, are loudly distancing themselves from the defund movement?”
There was so much that Omar could have said at that point. She could have noted that her fellow far-Left Muslim politician from Minnesota, former congressman and current state attorney general Keith Ellison, admitted in November 2021: “I think allowing this moniker, ‘Defund the police,’ to ever get out there, was not a good thing.”
Ellison was understating the case. After the Minneapolis City Council took $1.1 million from the police and gave it to the health department, Minnesota Public Radio reported in September 2020: “The number of reported violent crimes, like assaults, robberies and homicides are up compared to 2019, according to MPD crime data. More people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of 2020 than were slain in all of last year. Property crimes, like burglaries and auto thefts, are also up. Incidents of arson have increased 55 percent over the total at this point in 2019.”
Bowing to popular pressure, Minneapolis bowed to popular pressure and increased police funding at the end of 2021. It was abundantly clear by that time to all but the most blinkered and deluded far-Left ideologue that defunding the police wouldn’t lead to a new era of peace, love, and understanding, but the reduction of our nation’s cities to hellholes of skyrocketing crime, homelessness, drug addiction, and all the other charming features of cities run by Leftist ideologues.
Related: The Unmitigated Gall of Ilhan Omar
Omar, however, showed no sign whatsoever that she was aware of the catastrophic consequences of leaving large numbers of people bereft of police protection. She responded to Hasan by saying: “When you see the rise in mental health crises, when you’re seeing domestic violence increase because of COVID and other measures, when you see so many people with addiction problems, and you see the level of homelessness we have in our communities, and you still say more resources shouldn’t be allocated to that, to keep our communities safe and healthy, I really don’t know what your point is in saying that you represent the most vulnerable in our communities. Because if you care about those who are vulnerable, then you have to do everything that you can to keep them safe.”
Right. That’s why we need the police. It’s hard to escape the impression at this point that Omar cares about “the most vulnerable in our communities” at all, for they are the ones who bear the brunt of “Defund the Police” initiatives. One might almost get the impression that Omar, who is no friend of the First or Second Amendments, actually wants to see crime out of control and our cities in flames. After all, such conditions are the seedbed for the radical reconstruction of society that Leftists are increasingly open about trying to bring about.
Omar has even acknowledged this, saying: “I am, by nature, a starter of fires. My work has been to figure out where I’m going to burn down everything around me by adding the fuel of my religion, skin color, gender or even tone.” She says she wants to do this in order to address “the social and economic neglect that many brown and black people have experienced in this country, the need to address police brutality and our ability to create proper investments in communities.” If she ever got her way and did away with the police, brown and black people, and all other people as well, would experience “social and economic neglect” to an extent never before even dreamed of. Is that what she wants? Sure looks like it.
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