The horrific murder of Laken Riley by 26-year-old Venezuelan national Jose Ibarra, a repeat felon and illegal alien, could have been prevented if federal immigration laws had simply been enforced by the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden was called upon during his recent State of the Union address to mention the late Riley. But Biden mistakenly identified her as “Lincoln Riley,” the University of Southern California football coach!
Biden only accurately stated that she was “murdered by ‘illegals.'”
That’s true, but Biden’s precise use of the perhaps insensitive word “illegal” against the killer Ybarra almost immediately infuriated the left.
Biden quickly apologized for accurately identifying her killer as an illegal alien, but not for misidentifying the victim.
He left the impression of insensitivity that he was more angry about the violation of an open border base than about the horrific assault on a young 22-year-old American nursing student.
Mr. Biden’s woke open-borders policy has since been replaced by concerns that an increasing number of Americans will fall victim to foreign gangs and criminals. He seems oblivious to the approximately 100,000 Americans dying from fentanyl imported across open borders.
The same idea of abstract humanity juxtaposed with concrete ruthlessness toward humans characterizes much of the current leftist agenda.
The Biden administration envisions mandating the use of electric vehicles and banning natural gas appliances. These measures will supposedly help “save” the planet, even if they make life much more expensive and dangerous for the current middle class and poor people.
We are told that biologically born men who transition to female have a civil right to participate in women’s sports.
Transgender activism like this may sound benevolent in the abstract. But specifically, thousands of women are at risk by competing with the much greater musculoskeletal and natural strength of men in transition.
Additionally, tens of thousands of young female athletes are denied the opportunity to excel and set records, undermining more than half a century of women’s efforts to achieve parity with men’s sports.
In 2021, United Airlines President Scott Kirby boasted that the airline was committed to having 50% of all pilots trained be people of color or women.
The Federal Aviation Administration mandated similar diversity, equity, and inclusion in the hiring of air traffic controllers.
In 2023, Boeing boasted that it was using “inclusion” as a criterion for executive compensation. Future salaries will be adjusted based on the success of new hires, primarily based on race, gender and sexual orientation.
In the abstract, making air travel “more American” is undoubtedly a noble goal.
But if such meritocratic subordination is legitimized without proper consideration for the only criterion that really matters: the safety of the nearly 3 million American airline passengers on 45,000 flights a day. , lives would be needlessly lost.
Some data and recent anecdotal evidence suggests that something is currently dangerously wrong across the airline industry.
In January 2023, a series of Federal Aviation Administration computer failures caused thousands of domestic flights to be canceled or delayed. Over the past decade, collisions and crashes in commercial buildings have more than doubled.
Even more frightening, in the past two weeks alone, United Airlines has reported nearly 10,000 incidents that may have involved crew loss, air traffic controller error, manufacturing or maintenance issues with Boeing jets, or all three. I have experienced many devastating events. Specific details are strangely not made available to the public.
A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Mexico had to make an emergency landing due to a hydraulic failure. Another United flight from Sydney, Australia to San Francisco was also forced to turn back due to “maintenance issues.” Another flight departing from Chicago O’Hare International Airport also suffered an undisclosed “maintenance issue” and returned home.
A United plane taxied off the runway and became stuck in grass at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Another United flight from San Francisco also lost a wheel during takeoff.
Another United Airlines flight from Houston to Florida suffered an engine fire, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. Around the same time, a United Airlines flight from Hawaii to San Francisco suffered an engine failure mid-flight.
Dozens of people were injured on board the Boeing plane during a Chile Airlines flight from Australia to New Zealand. The cause was what authorities said was a “technical event that caused violent movements during the flight.”
When ideology and doctrine take precedence over merit, logic, and safety, the results are predictably horrifying and dangerous.
America needs to realign its priorities to protect the lives and aspirations of all its citizens, regardless of race or gender.
If our elites don’t stop playing God and forcing their vision of heaven on earth, they will definitely guarantee hell for us all.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of Basic Books’ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.You can contact him by email authorvdh@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
