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In his recent column, “Too many Democrats have gone soft on crime,” in the BDN on March 28, Matthew Gagnon critiques the trend toward letting “petty” crimes such as minor thefts and shoplifting slide. He states that the impact of these crimes is minimized, thus having a deleterious effect on individuals, businesses, and society at large. At the close of his essay he writes, “To dilute the consequences of repeated theft, even petty theft, is to undermine the social contract emboldening those who would seek to exploit the leniency of the law for their gain.”
I would not deny his concerns about some hardened teen miscreant moving from stealing a pack of gum to a life of crime, but the undermining of the “social contract” should be of more concern when considering the current Republican presidential nominee and his band of election-denying enablers. I think John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, the list goes on, have done more to “undermine the social contract” than a kid and the pack of gum.
Larry Abbott
Belmont
