For those who think Bernie Sanders is a well-meaning, if misguided, old man, he's not.  First, anyone who can still promote hardcore socialism (AKA communism) despite the 100,000,000 dead bodies it left behind in the 20th century is not well-meaning; he's flat-out evil.  The fact that Bernie honestly believes in the system (even as he survives the cognitive dissonance living life as a millionaire) is no excuse.

Second, the people and organizations Bernie has gathered around him point to a dark new age in America, one of race-hatred, anti-Semitism, and the breakdown of all law and order.  This post focuses on that last point, now that Bernie is embracing a group that has as its goal the end of our criminal justice system.

The Daily Caller has revealed the latest anti-civilization group that Bernie has gathered into his campaign:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign has embraced a far-left group that seeks to abolish prisons and has promoted a group the U.S. State Department designated as a Palestinian terrorist organization, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign website touts an endorsement from the radical group, Dream Defenders, and the group's co-director, Phillip Agnew, is a top Sanders surrogate.

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Dream Defenders aims to abolish the use of prisons, according to the group's website and public statements.

"Police and prisons have no place in 'justice.' Police and prisons aren't just racist but they work to enforce the separations of rich and poor," Dream Defenders's website states.

You can read more about the group's anti-Semitism at the link.  This just adds another name to the radical anti-Semites with whom Bernie surrounds himself, people such as Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.

Part of the social contract in modern Western society is that people will not seek private vengeance because the rule of law means that the system will protect them from criminals in their midst.  Before that social contract came into play, vigilante justice was the norm.  From the Stone Age through to the Medieval era, low-level raiding parties, with each party endlessly seeking revenge for its opposite number's predations, resulted in a warfare death rate of about 25% annually.

Modern America sees very little in the way of vigilante justice (although, as noted below, it still happens), but vigilantism is common in nations in which citizens believe that the legal system is either unfair or nonexistent.  The internet is teeming with stories about people beating to death someone claimed to be a child predator or murderer or arsonist.

Here's one example from Mexico:

A law student returning home to visit his family was reportedly beaten and burned to death with his uncle after someone posted fake rumors to messaging service WhatsApp that claimed the men were involved in child abduction and organ trafficking.

Here's another example, this time from India:

An Indian man who held two dozen children hostage at his daughter's birthday party was shot dead by police before locals beat his wife to death as she tried to escape.

And, as noted above, this kind of mob mentality occasionally comes to America, too:

A 54-year-old man was beaten to death by crowd of onlookers in Philadelphia after he attempted to steal a car with three children inside but was stopped by the parents, police said.

One of the hallmarks of a successful society is a reliable criminal justice system, one that provides due process for all who are called before it and that ensures that those who have committed crimes suffer a proportional consequence for their actions.  Without that consequence, there is no incentive to avoid crime, with the result that innocent people suffer.

Eventually, non-criminally inclined people, if they are plunged into a Darwinian world of survival without a reliable criminal justice system, will come to the belief that they have the righteous obligation to defend themselves, their families, and their community.  That's a throwback to a pre-modern world that we do not want to see coming to America — but it will if Bernie wins.