“ORGANIZING FOR AMERICA’S RUIN”: Exiting State Governor Pardons 40 Murderers
Exiting Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has pardoned 40 murderers as his time leading the state comes to an end.
Whether such recent compassion is purposely false or not is not the point of this piece. The purpose is to parallel observable political actions with an influential and insidious worldview and show how destructive the combination can be.
It’s to parallel such a decision in the waning of months of his second term with Barack Obama’s ongoing hit tour on America.
Edwards may hang his hat on being a conservative Democrat, but many of his observable actions say otherwise. Such misplaced (at best) compassion is an intended or unintended result of what Hayride and RVIVR publisher Scott McKay calls “Organizing for America’s Ruin” as the title of Chapter 5 of his new book from Calamo Press, Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It’s All Obama.
Jeff Crouere summarizes the situation:
Sadly, [Louisiana’s] violent crime rate is extremely high and New Orleans ranked as the murder capital of the nation in 2022. Other cities, such as Baton Rouge and Shreveport, have exceedingly high rates of violent crime as well.
Due to the considerable violence in Louisiana, the state has an extremely high incarceration rate. This is needed because of the plethora of criminals in Louisiana. Yet, Governor Edwards believes the high incarceration rate needs to be reduced, so he has been working overtime to release violent criminals from prison.
He signed a series of “criminal justice reform” bills in 2017 that released hundreds of inmates from prison early. Since October, Edwards has pardoned 40 murderers, including a killer who fatally stabbed his victim 39 times. In the last few weeks, he has released 56 convicts and more could be announced before his term ends.
This is not the way to go about restoring anything good to the state of Louisiana or any state, for that matter. No law is fulfilled here, whether that be a political law, a spiritual law, or a natural law. Mercy is absolutely available to murderers and thieves, to all criminals, but that mercy is not just if it removes the retribution for crimes done. Nor is it just if it puts society’s members at risk, if it subtracts from the common good.
Ironic, but that “common good” is such a tenant of the Left, such a weapon of ambiguity they use against the Republic, such a concept that Edwards is actually weakening in this case.
I hope to get into the natural and spiritual aspects of this decision sometime in the near-future, maybe even this week.
For now, the connections are political and philosophical, which are unequivocally enough to destroy a state and a nation. Edwards’ pardons reek of the same mob rule and lack of justice we experienced in 2020 when American cities were burning, when the only “great” cities in Louisiana took a real turn for the worse. It is simply one last gut shot to Louisianans and Republicans who made something very clear in their domination at the polls this fall–
They want law and order to be restored. And this is a theme we see sweeping the nation as a whole. Louisiana is simply a microcosm of that, of the America First movement.
I believe McKay might say Edwards’ efforts to further plunge the state of Louisiana into lawlessness and national irrelevance is all Obama too. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of his book. Read it with Edwards’ pardons in mind:
…Obama applied his considerable organizational skills to perpetuating the old, failed way of doing things.
In that sense, the future president was utterly and completely bound–bound so completely it was stronger than the daily evidence before his eyes–to that most fundamental tenet of leftist thought: that all problems of poverty, and want, and even criminality are the fault of the larger society, rather than a matter of personal responsibility; and that the solution was to be found in the state using its untrammeled power to level the playing field.
The oft-discredited idea had found renewed acceptance in the Sixties, taking such full hold within the Democratic Party that it soon became all but impossible for anyone in its ranks to stand up for the old verities of hard work and individual responsibility. This became all too apparent in 1965, when future Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time a Harvard academic serving as assistant Secretary of Labor under Lyndon Johnson, issued his famous report warning of “the unraveling of the black family”…
A clear and honest thinker Moynihan dared to place the blame not on want of funding or “systemic racism” but where it belonged: on the choices and actions of the individuals involved. (McKay 79)
Edwards’ bid to undo Louisiana’s morbid reputation as being the most incarcerated in the nation is simply the stuff of shallowness and superficiality that our entire society bleeds from. It’s the begging for the ‘A’ in a class you’ve earned a ‘B’ in. It’s the perfecting filter on the Snapchat pic when you know good and well you don’t really look like that. It’s the façade that makes something appear better when nothing has changed fundamentally.
“For as long as I can remember, Louisiana reflexively responded to an increase in crime by putting more people in prison and keeping them there longer,” Edwards said. “We’ve never been made safer as a result of that. There is no data to suggest that an increase in crime here was because of the reforms.”
Okay, Edwards, sure. Go at the root of the problem. I actually agree. This sounds good, and it is in theory and perhaps will sound even better with action from Governor-elect Jeff Landry, but the crimes have been committed already. The past is done. We cannot change the fundamental issues in our society by action that attempts to revise observable history, that pardons murderers. Are those criminals truly rehabilitated? Are they remorseful? Has there been true retribution for the crime committed against another human being?
Is society safer now that this little chart and statistics can shift just a bit?
State Representative Laurie Schlegel was passionate on the issue. WAFB News offers more context.
“These are murderers who killed people that are getting their sentences commuted. That’s the facts,” Schlegel added.
But it wasn’t just the governor’s call; he can only grant clemency when recommended by the Louisiana Parole Board. Each case was brought before the board for a public hearing and needed four out of five votes in order to have their sentence commuted. A spokesperson with the governor’s office says many of them had clean disciplinary records while behind bars.
“Well, they were sentenced because they committed murder, and the sentence for first- and second-degree murder is life without the possibility of parole. So, if they want to change the sentencing for people who actually commit murder, then go lobby the legislature to change the laws,” Rep. Schlegel continued.
Some of the inmates were released on community supervision under programs like the parole project, which has certain requirements like additional programming, curfews and proof of employment. Rep. Schlegel says she’s looking forward to the planned special session on crime in February to address the issue for future cases.
“Also, just as a legislator who’s dedicated most of my bills last session to addressing crime and public safety, I’m deeply concerned with all of this,” Rep. Schlegel explained.
Edwards is not getting to the true root of the problem here. Obama was not, and is not, either. The connection is clear. The Democrats want democracy because inevitably that degenerates into mob rule–we saw that very plainly in 2020, a theme I explored in, among other articles, “Don’t Apologize, Drew”:
This is what sows the seeds of distrust.
Many Americans ask themselves when it comes to these situations, Do protestors, white or black, really want the change they’re up in arms about? Do they really? Do they really know what it takes to get there? Because if getting there means you stomp on me and my rights and my memories of family, you can forget it.
That’s where the “deafness” comes in. People have their dignity. They have their families. They have their lives. They believe that the societal change that needs to take place between races can happen alongside those values, and when the indication from protestors is that no, you cannot keep those values and stand alongside us, most Americans can appear not to care.
But that isn’t true at all.
And this is the case with Drew Brees.
I would be willing to give his attackers a break and look at this from both sides here if they had been more civilized about it. Maybe some phone calls or in-person conversations like men? But the pure vitriol that is coming across social media instead defies friendship, camaraderie, and basic human decency. Drew Brees said nothing that should have been inflammatory on Wednesday. He said everything that is true to who he is as an individual human being living in a difficult time—he disagreed with something, proceeded to tell a very heartfelt, personal story of why, and then went on to assure the other people he loved that may disagree with him that he also stands by them and recognizes the change that needs to continue to happen.
His ideas were couched in love for brother. Their ideas seem to be couched in unbridled hate.
As I have written on recently, one duty as an educated American is knowing the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic.
A state like Louisiana is relevant in the geopolitical landscape only because of the distinction. It is one reason we have both a House of Representatives and a Senate. This is simple civics here. A move like Edwards’ to pardon such a long list of criminals speaks to the absence of law and order–a fundamental tenant of Republicanism–that Governor-elect Landry is promising.
Realize I am not talking about Republicanism in the “one side of the aisle” way here. I am talking about it in the “what our nation actually is” way.
The insistence on the word ‘democracy’ to identify America can be infuriating, if only mildly so (note that the above chart does it), because that terminology brings with it everything the Democrats are wanting to convince Americans of, including open borders and open voting and welfare for any and all who want it. It allows for 2020 to happen. Such confusion of terminology might not be an enormous obstacle in peaceful times, considering that America does indeed have some democratic principles, but we are not living in peaceful times. We are living in the middle of fifth generation warfare that at the top is pitting Deep State globalists inside the American government against sovereign nationalists intent on saving the Republic.
Make no mistake about this: when citizens fight for their state, they are fighting for the United States of America.
In Louisiana’s case, Landry and his platform speak directly to the saving of the Republic. Edwards and his platform, while priding itself on compromise and relative conservatism, speak directly to the poison injected into this country by Barack Obama, a society run by the mob and the most degenerate among us, a society that is tumbling toward ruin if politicians and people alike don’t fight for it.
May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
