A mass shooting at a house party in South Africa kills 11,

Imagine being on a guest list for a small gathering, only to have three men kick in the door and turn the room into a graveyard. That is the reality for the families in Soweto, South Africa, after gunmen opened fire on a house party and killed 11 people, one of them pregnant. When we see stories like this, the instinct is to shake our heads at the tragedy "over there." But that instinct is a cop-out. We see the same pattern at home when progressive leaders defund the police and coddle criminals over victims. Violence always follows a breakdown of order.

The details from the police are chilling because they show a total contempt for human life. The gunmen didn't rob the place, as far as we know. They just came in and started shooting. In South Africa, the ruling party has spent years blaming apartheid for every current ill while gutting the institutions that keep the peace. Sound familiar? Here, we watch cities like San Francisco and Portland fiddle with bail reform while smash-and-grab crews treat retail stores like an open buffet. The left insists we need to "understand" the root causes of poverty before we can act. But the people at that party in Johannesburg weren't asking for a sociology lecture. They were asking for safety.

The real tragedy is that this is a preventable outcome of policies that prioritize the optics of compassion over the reality of deterrence. When you weaken the police, you don't get less crime—you get bolder criminals. Whether it's a house party in an impoverished neighborhood in South Africa or a carjacking in Chicago, the equation is the same. We don't have all the answers, but we know that a society that refuses to defend itself is a society that gets invaded. It is a specific set of policy priorities that leads to this carnage. The partygoers were terrorized because the state failed its most basic job. We should say so plainly.