Blue states across the country—especially California, Oregon, and Washington—spent the past decade as real-world laboratories of these radical theories. The result has been one of the worst humanitarian disasters in American history. And nowhere was it worse than my state: California, where soft policies were implemented first and most forcefully.

Historians who go looking for the beginning of the story might look at Proposition 47, passed 10 years ago by California’s voters. This law put into practice one of those “compassionate” ideas: it transformed any theft of goods worth less than $950 from a felony into a misdemeanor. It did the same with drug possession. 

As a result, prosecutors lost much of the legal authority they needed to prosecute, for example, breaking and entering, resulting in brazen smash and grabs orchestrated by criminal gangs, and leaving store employees and customers helpless as they watched criminals loot everything from luxury items to toiletries. It also became much more difficult to prosecute drug dealers, who could simply say that their drugs were for their own use. Drug dealers also took advantage of Prop 47 by parceling out their supply to homeless addicts, who would then take the fall if they were caught.