| Highlights of DAWN | October 1977 |
The Edge of Anarchy
SO PREVALENT has cheating become throughout our social structure that U.S. News & World Report magazine recently prepared a special report on the situation under the heading, “How People Cheat Uncle Sam Out of Billions” (July 11, 1977). “Bribery, theft, kickbacks, phony billings. These and other tricks are being used every day to siphon off the taxpayers’ money,” said the subtitle. The article then went on to discuss in detail some of the various areas of thievery, corruption, and lawlessness: federal housing assistance, veterans’ programs, medicaid, food programs, farm goods, bilking the pentagon, etc.
The nation’s welfare system was devised, and properly so, to assist those who are unable to help themselves. It is also an area subject to some of the most flagrant and widespread abuse. One national weekly recited the case of a woman who has finally “been convicted of drawing public assistance under two names at once, to the total of 23 monthly checks. According to the evidence and the prosecutors, she also got or applied for food stamps, free medical aid, rent subsidies, child care and housekeeper expenses … under a number of aliases.”
What particularly appalled the reporter was the fact that it took 2½ years to bring this woman to justice. The same writer asked, “What has become of old-fashioned honesty? One answer is that the Government is running a school for cheaters.”
Another fertile field for cheating is the medicaid program. U.S. News & World Report (March 22, 1976) says, “The methods of abuse are endless: … billing for services not rendered, billing more than once for the same service, providing unnecessary treatment, altering bills, ordering unusual tests, charging excessively for services.” Official estimates of the total dollar loss run into the billions.
Shoplifting by customers of supermarkets is on the increase and amounts presently to some $600,000,000 per year. The most popular items are cigarettes and meat. And this form of stealing is not restricted to professional thieves, for it is believed that most such stealing is done by amateurs. Another fruitful area for stealing is in the field of charity organizations. One such organization was found to have collected over 20 million dollars in contributions, with only about 1.5 million dollars actually finding its way into charitable purposes.
Even our college graduates resort to highly questionable practices. When one student who had obtained large loans to finance his college education pleaded bankruptcy, thus freeing him of obligation to repay some $10,000, he said, “I feel no stigma whatsoever. … This bankruptcy thing doesn’t bother me. They were institutions who lost, not people. None of my friends has said anything to me. I’m no social outcast.”
Another student had borrowed $2,400 from the federal government to help him through college, to be repaid after graduation. “When the bill for the first quarterly payment arrived,” says Newsweek (March 7, 1977), “Brown [the graduate] was furious. ‘There was my university telling me to start paying $240 a year. … For what? To pay off a degree they gave me so I could sell refrigerators?’” As many as 10 per cent of student borrowers are defaulting on their loans, with the defaults presently amounting to $190 million.
Nor are the very young immune from the epidemic of lawlessness. And they can be neither effectively punished nor rehabilitated. Newsweek Magazine tells the story of one child who was 9 when arrested for shoplifting. Three months later he had graduated to burglary and was again released with a warning. By the time he was 12 he had been arrested sixteen times and was given his first jail term at a Youth Authority Camp, from which he escaped four times. A few days after his release at age 14, he killed a man. He has been charged with 26 crimes. But now, at 18, he is a free man.
“The statistics on child criminals are awesome,” says Newsweek. “Juvenile crime has risen by 1,600 per cent in twenty years. More crimes are committed by children under 15 than by adults over 25—indeed, some authorities calculate that half of all crimes in the nation are committed by juveniles. Phoenix school psychologist William Hall has said, “Society seems to be flying apart. The kids just feel the vibrations much more than adults.”
Even the presumed law enforcers have themselves become lawbreakers. In a dispute with the City of New York over wages and hours, the police took to the streets, screaming and blowing whistles all night outside the Mayor’s mansion, disturbing patients in a nearby hospital and disrupting midtown traffic by parading through traffic-clogged streets. They created so much chaos that teenage gangs and pickpockets were able to run rampant. “Police officers have a right to picket,” said Mayor Beame, “but they have no right to act in a lawless manner.”
The breakdown in morality is not restricted to the poor, the unfortunate, and the illiterate. It is permeating and rotting the entire social fabric. U.S. News & World Report (Jan. 10, 1977) says that at least 4 million offenses are committed against corporations each year, many of them “inside jobs. The bill: a whopping 40 billion dollars—and going up about 10 per cent a year.” The report continues, “The losses result from such things as burglaries, shoplifting, bad checks, arson, employee theft, kickbacks, bribery and fraud.”
The behavior of the people during the recent blackout in New York City well illustrates the deplorable depths to which man can fall when greed breaks through the thin restraints of authority and decency. The lights of the city were hardly dimmed when thousands of looters surged through the streets, breaking glass and ransacking stores at random. More than 3,400 persons were arrested.
Time magazine headed their blackout story as a “Night of Terror” and said it was “the kind of event that brings out the best and the worst in people. … What shocked the city, and much of the world, was that tens of thousands … poured from the tenements and barrios … to produce an orgy of looting. Bands of men and women, and even children, tore steel guard grilles from store fronts with crowbars, stealing all they could carry, and destroying what they could not.”
The following day, in broad daylight, looters continued to batter down store doors and windows and haul off whatever they could lay their hands on. Even a store of prayer shawls and Bibles was cleaned out.
These people were not prompted to steal by hunger. Photographs of the chaotic scene showed simply garbed but well-fed people, young and old, madly dismantling retail stores and carrying away TV sets, stereos, jewelry, bedroom dressers, sporting goods, pictures, and drugs. The brief reign of anarchy was not induced by need. Indeed, even while greedily snatching merchandise from one another’s grasp, a holiday mood prevailed. “It’s Christmas in summer,” some shouted. One shudders to contemplate the horrors that would accompany a similar blackout if the people were really hungry!
U.S. News & World Report carried an article (August 1, 1977), “New York’s Looters: Budding Anarchy?” The subheading followed up the ominous theme with the statement that “Americans are waking up to the fact that the world’s richest nation may be living on the outskirts of anarchy.” The writer continued, “Ripping off—bluntly, stealing—is regarded as a tolerable pursuit and even a noble one if the victim happens to own a few more dollars than the thief does.”
It was stated by some that the looting was excusable if the poverty of the looters was considered. However, a study by the city showed that income among the 2,706 adult defendant looters averaged about the same as New York’s population in general. The plea of poverty is invalid, the Washington Star pointed out, when the targets seemed not to be necessities but, for the most part, cars, television sets, and liquor.
As disdain for authority and the lives and property rights of others increases, one must wonder if we may not even now be looking at a miniature preview of the anarchy that shall characterize the Bible Armageddon.
Significant to the times in which we are living, the looting seemed to be marked by an utter lack of any sense of wrong-doing. One reporter wrote, “There was a carnival atmosphere. Downtown they were getting drunk and directing traffic. Uptown they were getting drunk and shopping without money.” Another said, “It was a tragedy in one act.”
Commenting on the plunder, Time magazine remarked (July 25, 1977), “Respect for law and authority has declined: thieves often go unpunished; crime and violence stalk the slums.” Said U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, “If you turn the lights out, folks will steal.” A Miami mother of six went even further. “Pretty soon the lights won’t have to go out for trouble to start,” she said.
We are constantly reminded these days of the thinness of the veneer of culture that overlies so-called civilized man. It came to light again a few months back when the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, was destroyed by fire and some 400 merrymakers lost their lives. This was a tragic and sobering event, indeed. Yet, “A short distance away,” reports Time magazine, “police stood watch over the parking lots—looters had gone to work even before the flames were out, stripping valuables from cars and even from the bodies of victims that had been laid out on the manicured lawn which surrounds the doomed club.”
So widespread has cheating of all kinds become that a whole new phraseology has become part of our vocabulary. The expression “rip-off” has not yet taken its place in many dictionaries; but it has indeed found its way into general conversation and our daily lives. Rip-offs cover a wide variety of dishonest dealings.
U.S. News & World Report lately interpreted some of this new phraseology under the heading, “A Catalogue of Swindles—and How They Work” (July 11, 1977). “Disaster Chasers,” says the report, specialize in defrauding potential beneficiaries of local disasters. “Tea Housing” describes the practice of contractors who get together to agree illegally in advance on bids for military contracts.
“Ping Ponging,” according to this report, is what occurs when a patient visits a medical clinic and, whether he needs treatment or not, is shuttled from one doctor to another, each of whom submits a bill to be paid by medicaid. “Family Ganging” is another way of gouging the medicaid program. A clinic insists on examining all the children of a family when only one is sick. The physician submits a bill for each child. “Crime by Wire” describes what happens when someone gains illegal access to a computer and manipulates inventory, payroll accounts, and other computer data to his own benefit. Stealing, to be sure, on a highly sophisticated level!
Assessing the moral climate of the world in which we presently live, U.S. News & World Report recently remarked, “As masses of people gain more voice and bigger aspirations in all parts of the world, nations trying to keep the course of events on an even keel will become more vulnerable to dissidence and disorder.” In Winnipeg, British educator Sir Eric Ashby recently told a symposium of scholars, “The gyroscope of law which has kept society steady for generations is now wobbling under the influence of the urban guerrilla, the hijacker, the bomb planter. … The dilemma is that never before has so much self-discipline been needed from the public; and at the same time never before has the capacity to enforce discipline been so weak.”
Cheating, looting, and stealing of every description, by those in high places and low, are the visible evidences of the growing disregard for law that is infecting present-day society. They present but one aspect of the overspreading and many-faceted malady of selfishness that is eating away at the very foundations of world stability and that will eventually bring about its final destruction.
This callous and well-nigh universal disregard for law marks our place on the stream of time. It tells us Christ’s kingdom is near, for our Lord foretold that these evil conditions would prevail at the time of his second advent and would signify the end of the age. He said that at that time “iniquity shall abound.” (Matt. 24:3,12) The New English Bible renders this passage “lawlessness spreads,” and Rotherham puts it as “lawlessness being brought to the full.”
Writing to Timothy, the Apostle Paul said: “In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”—II Tim. 3:1-4
Indeed, it is because iniquity and lawlessness will have come to the full that the Heavenly Father will bring about the destruction of this present evil world in the day of his wrath, the day of the Lord [Jehovah]. The Prophet Isaiah wrote: “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. … And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.”—Isa. 13:9,11
The Prophet Zephaniah foretells the same things. He writes: “The great day of the Lord [Jehovah] is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. … And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung.”—Zeph. 1:14,15,17
But the world in general has no ears to hear the rumblings of the time of trouble, no hearts to recognize and appreciate the joys and blessings of truth and righteousness. As “the world that then was” perished in the Flood because “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and they “knew not until the Flood came,” so also does this present evil world approach its dissolution because of iniquity, with its inhabitants likewise “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,” while totally unaware of the gathering storm.—II Pet. 3:6; Gen. 6:5; Matt. 24:37,39
The psalmist wrote, “The dull man cannot know … that, though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction for ever; but thou, O Lord, art on high for ever, for lo, thy enemies, O Lord, for, lo, thy enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered.”—Ps. 92:6-9, RSV
He then goes on to describe the blessedness of the righteous in the coming Kingdom of Christ—that “new heavens and … new earth” wherein righteousness shall reign supreme. He says, “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing: to show that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.—II Pet. 3:13; Ps. 92:12-15
This wonderful new world of love and peace and everlasting life will be the glorious result of Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of the whole human race, all of whom shall come forth from their graves to have a full opportunity to gain everlasting life here on earth. In those days, the Lord says, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor: and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”—Jer. 31:33,34
The Prophet Isaiah likens this coming new world, with its offer of life to the resurrected world of mankind, to a highway from which all obstacles of prejudice and ignorance and false teachings have been removed. “An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there.” In that new world, evil and evildoers will have no place. Satan is the god of this present evil world, and he has blinded the minds of the people. (II Cor. 4:4) Today, he goes about “as a roaring lion, … seeking whom he may devour.” (I Pet. 5:8) But in that coming new world Satan will be bound, “that he should deceive the nations no more.”—Rev. 20:3
“Nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return [to the family of God], and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”—Isa. 35:8-10
For the coming of that long-promised time of blessing upon a long-suffering world we continue earnestly to pray!