This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Mike Pompeo served in the first Trump administration as secretary of state, also led the CIA, and now is senior counsel for global affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice.

And he is describing the violent crime wracking American now as a national crisis, blaming, "failed progressive policies."

"Left-wing politicians have convinced themselves that greater compassion for the criminals is the only way to address the root causes of crime. In practice, that has meant declining to prosecute dangerous individuals and repeat offenders, disempowering police, and making it almost impossible to commit individuals with dangerous mental illness to the psychiatric care they need to keep themselves and others safe," he wrote.

He cited the recent violence: "Deadly attacks on an ICE facility in Texas and an LDS Church in Michigan. These attacks came on the heels of the very public assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the horrific killing spree at a Minneapolis Catholic school that claimed the lives of two children, and the now infamous stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina."

He noted "all that is going in the right direction" for Americans, but also called out the "darkness – that seems to be at large."

"Whether it's the lionization of political assassinations or the normalization of random acts of violence, there are definite echoes of the lawlessness that reigned during the 1960s and 1970s. And while the spike in homicide rates and violent crime that began in 2020 has gone down, it has by no means returned to pre-pandemic levels," he noted.

He explained it's made worse because "progressives continue to demonize law enforcement. From the 'defund the police' movement that accompanied the riots of 2020 to the rhetorical attacks on ICE as they attempt to enforce immigration law, the Left is undermining law enforcement and encouraging further acts of violence."

He said the messaging from extremists is that, "we can never 'arrest our way out' of criminality." But, he said, "The evidence suggests the precise opposite: Violent crime only goes down when the perpetrators are incarcerated, and when the severely mentally ill are given the help they need to protect themselves and others."

He said the problem, deeper than policy changes, however, relates to the spiritual.

"As much of our nation has turned away from religion, we've lost the moral compass that goes with it. The unprecedented phenomenon of spending so much of our lives online – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic – has had a flattening effect on the way many people view their fellow Americans. And the collapse of trust in institutions has opened up new spaces for conspiracy theories to take root – causes eagerly adopted by evil actors and the mentally unwell," he said.

"As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When elected officials coddle criminals and refuse to protect law-abiding citizens, they fail to uphold the most basic obligations of governance and put us all in danger. When lawlessness is given free rein, it corrodes our social fabric and contributes to a wider sense of disorder, distrust, and moral rot. And when our society turns its back on God and reduces human beings to mere representations of a political, ethnic, or a social category, we open up new opportunities for malevolence to run riot."