Mercy to the Guilty Is Cruelty to the Innocent

Two people who should still be with us are no longer with us.

Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who rebuilt her life in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her family, was stabbed by a man who should never have been out on the street.

Charlie Kirk, a star in conservative politics and co-founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, was assassinated in cold blood by a professional sniper.

Different lives. Different circumstances. But both deaths share a familiar backdrop: a culture of leniency that confuses mercy with moral laziness.

Or as Adam Smith warned over two centuries ago:

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

We forgot that. And innocent people keep paying for it in blood.

When Compassion Becomes Complicity

Somewhere along the line, our leaders convinced themselves that the surest path to a safer society was to hug the wolves and lecture the sheep about tolerance.

Remember former UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s idiotic “Hug a Hoodie” campaign? It was supposed to melt the hearts of disaffected British youth. Instead, it broadcast to every aspiring street thug that society didn’t fear them — it pitied them.

The hoodies didn’t hug back. Knife crime soared, trust collapsed, and Cameron’s brainwave now sits in the political Hall of Shame right between “Peace in Our Time” and “Let’s Try Prohibition.”

Of course, the Rotherham Grooming Gangs in the UK were even worse, and are an ongoing stain on the national and local governments. The complicity is what Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy.”

Mayors of Sanctuary Cities in America look equally stupid. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, LA Mayor Karen Bass, and California Governor Gavin “Gruesome” Newsom are among the dimmest the Democratic Party has to offer. I pray the DNC will give Newsom the 2028 Democratic nomination for President. Vance will wipe the debate room with Newsom’s idiocy.

This is the pathology of our times: elites congratulating themselves for their “compassion” while the rest of us nervously scan the street at night.

Leniency Erodes Trust — and Safety

Legal and economic research is painfully evident on this point: when punishment becomes optional, so does obedience.

Societies maintain high trust levels through visible, reliable consequences for wrongdoing. When citizens see murderers and rapists being punished swiftly and seriously, they trust the system. They cooperate with the police. They testify in court. They invest in their neighborhoods.

But when they see violent offenders stroll out of court on suspended sentences or “restorative justice” retreats, they assume — correctly — that the system will not defend them.

Trust collapses. Fear takes over. And social cohesion rots from within.

The Criminals Are Watching Too

We talk about deterrence as if it were some mystical force. It’s not. It’s simple math.

If the reward of committing a crime outweighs its risk, crime wins.

Research on UK knife crime showed that soft sentencing didn’t just fail to deter—it emboldened repeat offenders. They calculated that the system wouldn’t stop them, so they didn’t stop themselves.

Leniency without consequences is an engraved invitation to keep offending.

The Revolving Door to Hell

Once the public stops believing the system will protect them, they disengage. We see it now. Consider the Daniel Penny case. He saved a woman’s life on the NYC subway by accidentally killing her attacker. His reward was a show trial that luckily went his way.

It’s no wonder people looked the other way when poor Iryna was bleeding out. Innocent bystanders no longer want to get involved.

People stop reporting crimes. They stop cooperating with the police. In the worst cases, they start handling “justice” themselves.

And when that happens, you don’t get peace — you get chaos. You get vendettas, vigilantism, and neighbors who stop trusting neighbors.

The rule of law works only when it’s enforced. And seriously ask yourself this? How many laws are on the books? Lawlessness isn’t the problem. The complete lack of enforcement of current laws from Soros DAs is.

Remove the enforcement, and all that’s left is a very expensive pantomime — a stage set of statutes no one believes in anymore.

Iryna and Charlie

That’s the backdrop to both murders: perpetrators who long ago stopped fearing a system because of its failure to punish.

Iryna’s killer, Decarlos Brown, Jr., was a known violent offender who had 14 priors. The judges who let him off were barely qualified to fingerpaint, let alone judge criminal cases.

Charlie’s suspected assassin operated in a climate where political violence increasingly carries little consequence. Remember, no one served a minute’s worth of time for burning down Minneapolis in 2020.

And while the talking heads scold the public to be more “understanding,” the graveyards fill with the names of people who played by the rules and paid the price for it.

That time came to an end yesterday. The People will have their way.

Wrap Up

Genuine mercy is a virtue. Misplaced mercy is malpractice.

We don’t preserve civilization by hugging hoodies, group-therapying gangsters, or applauding ourselves for “restorative justice” while the morgues fill up.

Remember:

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

That isn’t callousness. It’s realism. Justice that refuses to defend the innocent isn’t justice at all — it’s aiding and abetting.

If the state won’t protect its people, it shouldn’t be surprised when the people stop believing in The State.