How to Reverse Societal Decline

Victor Joecks
Mon, 13 Apr 2026 10:21:37 -0700
Opinion

Retail stores locking up items is the symptom of a much larger problem.

I recently went to Walmart and had ibuprofen on my shopping list. I went to the medicine section and — groan — saw this $5 item locked behind glass. There were a couple of other people already waiting, so I looked around for a call button. That's when one of the people waiting said an employee was already helping them, but needed to get more boxes.

I was utterly confused.
Updated: Mon Apr 13, 2026

Retail stores locking up items is the symptom of a much larger problem.

I recently went to Walmart and had ibuprofen on my shopping list. I went to the medicine section and — groan — saw this $5 item locked behind glass. There were a couple of other people already waiting, so I looked around for a call button. That's when one of the people waiting said an employee was already helping them, but needed to get more boxes.

I was utterly confused.

One of the waiting customers remarked that he was from Florida and that stores there didn't have items behind locked glass. What a difference having Ron DeSantis as governor makes. I generously spared him a full rundown of how Democrats passed a soft-on-crime bill in 2019. Not punishing criminals led to a dramatic increase in retail theft. Stores are taking steps to stop theft — and I soon learned how inconvenient those measures are for everyone else.

Eventually, a Walmart employee returned carrying clear plastic boxes with locking tops. She removed each customer's desired item from behind the glass and put it in the locking box. At checkout, another employee unlocked my box so I could pay for my item.

This is ridiculous.

I don't blame Walmart. I wouldn't want criminals stealing from me either.

But there's plenty of blame to go around. Criminals are responsible for their own actions. The bill that Democrats passed in 2019, gutting criminal penalties, is part of the problem. In 2020, the Nevada Supreme Court significantly weakened bail in Nevada. That's played a role. Legislative Democrats have largely resisted Gov. Joe Lombardo's attempts to put teeth back into Nevada's crime laws.

The left's soft-on-crime policies stem from its worldview. A worldview is someone's underlying beliefs that they use to interpret and make sense of what's going on. Everyone has a worldview, even if most people don't think about it consciously. When people talk past each other in a policy discussion, it's often because their worldviews conflict. You have to dig underneath the surface to expose the root of the disagreement.

The left has embraced critical theory, which divides people into binary groups based on finances, race or other characteristics. This split produces some groups that are more successful than others. Intersectionality is the left's way of combining and ranking these groups.

Critical theorists believe that the successful group obtained their elevated status by victimizing those in the other group. These supposed oppressors created systems and institutions to entrench their dominance of the victim group.

How a group can get rich robbing poor people is never quite explained.

But you can see the implications. Individual responsibility is thrown out the window since success or failure is a function of group membership, not personal choices. Stealing is proof the system has failed. As such, the government shouldn't punish a thief for something that's beyond his control. Government policy should overtly favor oppressed groups, not set an objective standard for individuals to follow.

Further, those objective standards, like "don't steal", aren't neutral principles. They're tools the powerful use to cement their privilege. One of the deepest roots of this poisonous philosophical plant is a rejection of absolute truth.

Most Democrats won't fully articulate this. For one, many people haven't fully thought through their worldview. Outside of a college campus, it also sounds like a conspiracy theory — because it is one.

Critical theory is bogus. For one, you can't logically reject absolute truth while claiming that your belief system is true. It's also morally wrong to judge people based on their skin color instead of their character.

Finally, this worldview fails in practice. Going easy on criminals has led to ibuprofen in Southern Nevada being behind lock and key — twice. That's not a success story. In other cities, like San Francisco and Portland, stores have shut down entirely over crime.

It is possible to reverse this societal decline — but it requires rejecting the worldview causing the rot.