The good people in the Stearns County Human Services Department are all apparently criminals. At least that is what a mandated training program that all the employees were forced to attend insists.

Even I, a cynic about government, sincerely doubt that. My guess is that the fine employees at the department are as a group pretty law abiding and decent, if a bit beaten down by their HR Department.

Wouldn’t the workplace be a lot more enjoyable without HR Departments? I bit more chaotic and occasionally more unpleasant, but also more interesting and much less annoying overall.

Stearns County defended the training by saying it is a common program for government employees.https://t.co/LfYV1qY6HF pic.twitter.com/H5UpQTsYyu

— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) August 25, 2023

The Stearns County Human Services Department recently required all of its employees to attend a training on how they are “all criminals.”

The training was mandatory, according to internal emails obtained by Alpha News, and employees who were unable to attend were provided a recording.

“This training is mandatory for all staff, however, if you are unable to attend the in-person training, we will have a recording available for later viewing. Nevertheless, I encourage you to attend in person as it is a very powerful training (and it’s always fun to connect with your co-workers about all of us being criminals)!” Human Services Administrator Melissa Huberty wrote in an email to staff in the department.

The Aug. 14 training was called “We Are All Criminals” and was put on by a nonprofit of the same name.

We Are All Criminals is a nonprofit with an arguably good mission–help criminals reintegrate into society–and an indisputably bad message–that criminal activity is entirely normal and shouldn’t be stigmatized.

The big difference between criminals and the rest of us is “privilege,” not something as basic as the fact that most people who get caught up in the criminal justice system are predators who repeatedly do things that harm others and society as a whole.

In some minimally true sense, it is almost certainly true that everybody is a criminal. Have you rolled through a stop sign? Driven above the speed limit? Jaywalked? Did you steal anything as a kid?

Perhaps you assaulted a granny before stealing her purse? Stabbed somebody? Sold some fentanyl? Carjacked somebody? Sawed off the catalytic converter of your neighbor’s car? Are you a secret sex offender?

You know, we are all criminals…

“We are all criminals, we just have not been caught” is one of the central messages of WAAC, according to the organization’s website, where it tells the stories of people who committed crimes but “got away with it.”

“[WAAC] is also a commentary on the disparate impact of our nation’s policies, policing, and prosecution: many of the participants benefited from belonging to a class and race that is not overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Permanent and public criminal records perpetuate inequities, precluding millions from countless opportunities to move on and move up. WAAC calls out the injustice in those policies,” the group’s website says.

Yeah, well, no. There are indeed criminals who have cleaned up their act and deserve a second chance–everybody deserves a second chance–but the actual fact is that almost everybody who has worked his way through the criminal justice system and wound up in jail is a hardened criminal with a long, long rap sheet.

There are people for whom that isn’t true, of course; in fact, I know one or two, and for the most part, they come out the other side and find a way to work their way back into society. Usually, they are at a disadvantage compared to people without criminal records, of course, but the alternative is to treat predators and prey as if we are all the same.

We aren’t. Most criminals are just that: predators. And the current fetish for pretending that we are just like them is killing our cities and our society.

Stearns County is not some highly urbanized area run by a Soros DA. It is in Greater Minnesota, and while not exactly rural it isn’t dominated by a megacity either. You would expect it to be normal.

Unfortunately, when it comes to any organization large enough to have an HR Department this is the new normal. Overpaid non-profit organizations go out and propagandize for left-wing causes, administrators require employees to sit through this BS, and society gets worse.

Being a decent human being does not derive from privilege, and being a predator is not the inevitable consequence of not being privileged. In fact, the lower you are on the socio-economic ladder the more likely you are to be preyed upon.

It is indisputable that treating criminality as normal has made things much worse for everybody. Look at the cities where this ideology has conquered, such as Portland, Chicago, San Francisco, and all the rest of the increasingly hellish Blue cities.

Like the plague, this ideology is spreading–because all the biggest institutions in society have adopted it and subsidized it.

That, my friends, should be criminal.