All, perhaps, but our most recent generations grew up witnessing the many movies of the winning of the American West from lawless scoundrels who threatened the peace of the new settlers and their families seeking promising new lives on the frontier. No one who saw High Noon will forget the town’s lone marshal, played by Gary Cooper, anxiously awaiting a gang of killers to arrive on the midday train to challenge his protection of the townsfolk, including his Quaker wife, Grace Kelly, or deciding to leave with her and let the lawless gang take over the town.
In twenty-first-century America, lawlessness still exists; however, in many American communities, lawless behavior and the local disorder it creates are being excused by a new theory of community betterment called ‘social justice’. Before Social Justice was introduced to the public by Harvard and other elite universities with the high-sounding academic monikers of ‘Critical Race Theory’ (CRT), the theory had already been vividly presented for public evaluation in a 1957 Broadway production, West Side Story.
No one who viewed that brilliant production with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim can forget the litany of excuses offered to Sargent Krumpke for their teenage gangs’ lawless behavior.
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand:
It’s just our bringin’ upke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
We’re misunderstood.
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won’t give me a puff.
He’s psychologically disturbed!
This child is depraved on account he ain’t had a normal home.
This boy don’t need a doctor, just a good honest job.
Society’s played him a terrible trick,
And sociologically he’s sick!
This child don’t need to have his head shrunk at all.
Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease.
So take him to a social worker!
This boy don’t need a job, he needs a year in the pen.
It ain’t just a question of misunderstood—
Deep down inside him, he’s no good!
The trouble is he’s crazy.
The trouble is he drinks.
The trouble is he’s lazy.
The trouble is he stinks.
The trouble is he’s growing.
The trouble is he’s grown.
Gee, Officer Krupke,
What are we to do?
Sixty years after West Side Story first played on Broadway, neither academia nor our elected officials have solved the problem between maintaining an orderly and law-abiding society and addressing the social issues of a large, complex community. A first step would be to eliminate the partisan ‘either-or’ solutions and use ‘common sense’ to solve the problems.
Citizens must be protected against violent repeat offenders and not automatically afforded no-bail social justice. Merchants must not be obliged to allow their stores to be looted by youthful individuals or gangs who will not be prosecuted. Physical assaults, especially when performed with dangerous weapons, must be prosecuted.
For the CRT theorists, every person of color, gender, national origin, or others with a perceived special background situation is not necessarily a ‘victim’ of some imagined ‘oppressor’ deserving of privileged status in our society.
National criminal justice should be a state and local issue, as provided in the U.S. Constitution. Crime issues in Washington, DC, ultimately become federal responsibilities because the city serves as the nation’s capital, under federal supervision. Both the President and state officials should mind their own business. Governors and elected state officials should properly manage their jurisdictions. Drugs, poverty, broken families, functional illiteracy, and health issues should not be solved by social justice policies.
It should not be too much to ask that all responsible elected and concerned parties mind their business and SOLVE THE PROBLEMS! And to our academic elites, if you don’t learn how to cook better, stay out of the kitchen!
TW3
August 21, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins
