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This is the headline of an article published Aug. 26 in The New York Times: “Fare Evasion Surges on N.Y.C. Buses, Where 48% of Riders Fail to Pay.”

The article begins: “Every weekday in New York City, close to one million bus riders — roughly one out of every two passengers — board without paying.

“Fare evasion has led to startling financial losses for the (Metropolitan Transit Authority), the state agency that runs the city transit system. In 2022, the authority lost $315 million because of bus fare evasion and $285 million as a result of subway fare beaters, according to a 2023 report commissioned by the M.T.A.”

This report encapsulates the foolishness — and therefore the destructiveness — of progressive ideas.

To understand why, let’s go back five years.

On April 13, 2019, the Times ran this headline: “1 in 5 Bus Riders in New York City Evades the Fare, Far Worse Than Elsewhere.”

In just five years, the percentage of New Yorkers who avoid paying their bus fare — in other words, steal — increased from 20% to 50%, a two-and-a-half times increase.

And why might that be? The answer is the same answer that explains virtually every awful development in American cities: moronic progressive ideas and the Democratic Party, the party that governs all our big cities.

As reported in the 2019 article, “Fare evasion was widespread and the reasons varied. Riders did not have exact change. They knew they would not get in trouble …”

Let’s deal with these reasons.

“Riders did not have exact change.”

Are we to believe that two and a half times more New Yorkers lacked exact change in 2024 than in 2019? The “no exact change” excuse is typical of people who break laws — they don’t blame themselves; in fact, they regard themselves as perfectly innocent. This is precisely what almost all people who engage in criminal behavior — from fare evasion to murder — do: justify their behavior to themselves.

“They knew they would not get in trouble.”

That’s the real reason. And as we shall see, progressives ensure that fare evaders will not get in trouble.

If people believe they will get away with it, many, maybe even most, people will do bad things.

There are three reasons people desist from doing bad things:

Reason 1: They will be punished.

Progressives have done away with this crime prevention tool. In California, for example, progressives decided to make theft of up to $950 a misdemeanor. As a result, there is more theft of retail stores than at any time in modern California history.

The threat of punishment is why there is less fare evasion in London or Paris than in New York. As the 2019 Times article reported, “In London, where riders face fines as high as $1,300, the fare evasion rate on buses is only 1.5 percent.” And in Paris, “the fare evasion rate for buses is 11 percent. … The Paris transit system has 1,200 staff members dedicated to the problem and hands out about one million fines each year.”

In December 2018, The Washington Post reported:

“The D.C. Council gave final approval this week to a measure decriminalizing Metro fare evasion. … Council members and activists (said) decriminalization was an important step toward addressing disproportionate policing of African Americans who use the transit system. … Proponents of the bill, the Metro Fare Evasion Decriminalization Amendment Act of 2018, pointed to a recent report from the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs that found between January 2016 and February 2018, 91 percent of Metro Transit Police citations and summons for fare evasion were issued to African Americans.”

Thanks to progressives and D.C. Democrats, the amount of fare evasion increased exponentially in the nation’s capital. And so, a few months ago, D.C. did what New York City is now doing. As reported earlier this year by NBC News in D.C.:

“Enhanced enforcement against Metro fare evasion began in D.C. on Monday, March 18. The new policies are part of the anti-crime legislation approved by the D.C. Council and signed by Mayor Muriel Bowser earlier this month.”

Reason 2: People’s conscience prevents them from doing something bad.

This is true among a minority of people. But for a vast number of people, the conscience is largely useless. The fact that Stalin, Hitler, Mao and the many people who murdered and tortured on their behalf slept well at night should prove how utterly malleable the conscience is. In most people, the conscience is as strong as putty.

Reason 3: People believe God commands them not to engage in certain immoral behaviors.

People who believe in the Ten Commandments — and, importantly, that God is their author — are less likely to steal. This is the case either because they believe they must not steal just because God commands them not to or because they believe God will punish them.

But, of course, progressives have gotten rid of the Ten Commandments. Simply requiring school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments — as Oklahoma and Kentucky are attempting to do — has set off a left-wing panic.

In a nutshell, the Times headline encapsulates one other aspect of modern life: The civil war in America and in the West is not just between the Left and the Right. It is between the Left and civilization.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His commentary on Numbers, the fourth volume of “The Rational Bible,” his five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible, will be released in November 2024 and is available now for presale on Amazon. He is the co-founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.