United States President Donald Trump has cut down crime in the nation’s capital. For the first time in months, Washington, D.C., has gone more than a week without a homicide. Carjackings have decreased by 83 percent, robberies by 46 percent, car thefts by 21 percent, and overall violent crime by 22 percent. These astonishing results are due to President Trump’s federalization of D.C. law enforcement and deployment of National Guard troops. Since August 11, more than 1,000 criminals have been arrested and more than 110 illegal guns have been taken off the street.

Many of President Trump’s political opponents are attacking his efforts to clean up Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are applauding his efforts to protect and beautify the capital city. President Trump is also building a magnificent 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House. He is putting his real estate expertise to good use, not just at the White House but across Washington, D.C. During a photo op last week with National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., he talked about removing graffiti from city overpasses and replanting grass on city medians, boasting that he knows “more about grass than any human being.” Given the 18 golf courses that the president owns, this boast may be close to the truth.

When you listen to President Trump talk about getting criminals off the streets and making American cities beautiful again, it almost sounds like he is reading from our 2023 article “What Will Tomorrow’s Cities Be Like?” As that article brings out, beautifying our cities will take a lot more than landscape design and troops on the streets.

God has a plan to fix crime and make cities beautiful. He will address the root cause, which is our very own human nature.

“All cities through all of human history have been founded on wrong character,” wrote Joel Hilliker in that article. “They have been built up—and up—on Lucifer’s distorted thinking. That is why they have all failed. And the visionaries who want to build anew have no solutions for greed, envy, corruption, rebellion, hatred, crime, vandalism, drugs, prostitution and the other human thought and behaviors that have made all human cities, and the quality of life in them, terminally sick.”

Calling out the National Guard and arresting 1,000 criminals has made lawbreakers afraid to commit crimes; and cleaning up graffiti certainly helps elevate the human spirit. But these actions won’t make human beings turn away from Satan’s selfish way of get and turn to God’s selfless way of give.

Greed, envy, corruption, rebellion, hatred, crime, vandalism, drugs, prostitution and other human vices will continue in America because we are not combating our selfish human nature.

The greatest Americans in our history recognized this fact. In a 1787 letter, Benjamin Franklin commented, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

The Founding Fathers acknowledged the fact that freedom can exist only in a society where people voluntarily strive to suppress their own human nature. When people fail to rule themselves, they need a master to rule them instead. And masters themselves have human nature, and almost invariably devolve into one form of tyrant or another.

The fact that someone is murdered every 31 minutes in the United States shows that Americans are vicious rather than virtuous. President Trump is stepping up to force more people to obey the law. This is the right thing to do, since mercy to the guilty is indeed cruelty to the innocent. It’s a sad fact that this is what it is taking to establish even a degree of basic order in our cities: Humvees and armed troops.

Something is very wrong in America.

Regardless of what President Trump does, if the American people and their leaders do not repent of the viciousness, corruption, apathy and sin that is destroying our cities, a day may come soon when the only choice is between anarchy and tyranny.

The root cause of crime is selfish human nature. When people do not strive to regulate their own human nature, the only solution to anarchy is tyranny. This is an unpopular message, but self-government is the art of governing yourself, including your emotions, desires, impulses and actions. The entire idea of America in the first place was self-government!

Herbert W. Armstrong explained in his magnum opus, Mystery of the Ages, that God’s overall purpose is “infusing into us His very own spiritual, holy, righteous and perfect character!” Yet God cannot do this by fiat. He can only do it with our willing cooperation. Crises like the D.C. crime epidemic show us how badly we need to submit our will to God’s will. Because without God’s “own spiritual, holy, righteous and perfect character,” there are no lasting solutions.

Request your free copy of Mystery of the Ages, by Herbert W. Armstrong.