Last year, I lived for nearly five months in an extended-stay hotel across from a major teaching hospital in Aurora, Colorado.

It was my third extended stay there in three years. In total, I have spent more than 10 months in that community during my wife’s hospitalizations.

Disorder becomes permanent when citizens treat it as background noise.

That is long enough to know the difference between an exception and a pattern.

A sign at the city limits reads, “Welcome to Aurora — America’s City.”

At first, it seemed ironic. By the time I left, it read like an indictment.

Near the hospital, everyday life felt needlessly strained.

The grocery store lines were enormous. Entire banks of self-checkout lanes sat dark. Staffed lanes were closed, allegedly because of staffing shortages. This store belongs to one of the largest grocery chains in the country.

Resources were not the issue. Priorities were.

Basic necessities sat locked behind glass: detergent, deodorant, toothpaste. To buy them, I had to find a manager and request access.

Two armed police officers stood near the checkout lanes.

Then I reached for a bag.

Colorado charges for shopping bags. Fine. Charge for them. But none were available. I stood there with paid-for groceries and no way to carry them, scanning for an employee who could authorize the privilege of buying one.

Charge for the bag if you must. But if you charge for it, make it obtainable.

I speak Spanish well and know a few phrases in several other languages. While useful in Aurora, requesting una bolsa did not make one appear any faster.

Outside, carts sat scattered across the parking lot. Trash gathered along the curbs. Panhandlers approached vehicles at the entrance. Customers moved quickly, eyes down.

The hotel where I stayed was a national chain: key-card entry, corporate standards. The staff were decent, hardworking people. They were not hired to enforce the law. Yet I watched them physically confront individuals who slipped into the building and helped themselves to the breakfast buffet without apology and without fear of consequence.

RELATED: I came to the US legally. What we have now isn’t immigration — it’s chaos.

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When behavior is brazen, it signals confidence that no one will stop it.

Walking across the street to the hospital, I passed men and women sprawled on sidewalks, drug paraphernalia near bus stops, people shouting into empty air. While living there, I heard more gunfire than I hear during hunting season where I live in Montana.

Live somewhere for 10 months, and you start to feel the pulse of a place. It is a community living inside lowered expectations.

Standards rarely collapse in a single moment. They erode when enough people decide they are optional. At what point did we accept that this was simply how modern American cities function?

If Aurora is “America’s City,” then we no longer agree on what America means.

Years ago, my wife and I launched a prosthetic limb outreach in Ghana. I have seen clinics there operate with greater cleanliness and clearer systems than the community surrounding one of America’s premier teaching hospitals.

That is not meant to be an insult to Ghana. It is a warning to us.

Compassion and order are not enemies.

A society can care for the vulnerable and still insist on standards. In fact, it must. Compassion without structure becomes chaos, and chaos harms the very people it claims to protect.

Government exists to protect life and property. That is not partisan. It is foundational.

The reflexive answer to visible disorder is often another funding package. But public officials are not spending their own money. They are allocating earnings entrusted to them by citizens who expect order in return. When outcomes deteriorate while budgets expand, the issue is not funding. It is stewardship.

For more than 40 years, I have navigated surgeons, pain specialists, prosthetists, and hospital systems while advocating for someone who cannot afford substandard care. In those settings, standards are measurable, not merely aspirational.

One does not respect what one does not inspect. When professionals know their work will be reviewed, outcomes improve. When oversight weakens, so do results.

When an area becomes known for disorder, the mystery is not the criminals. It is the complying silence surrounding those charged with enforcing law and order. Those entrusted with authority must themselves be examined.

Advocacy is rarely glamorous or lucrative. It is repetitive, exacting, and sometimes unwelcome. But when the advocate steps away, small failures compound, and the vulnerable suffer more.

RELATED: ‘Phase one’ was quality control. ‘Phase two’ needs to be quantity control.

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A healthy society requires the same vigilance from its citizens.

Unenforced borders invite unlawful crossings. Unenforced laws embolden lawlessness. Unenforced standards always open the door to mediocrity and worse.

This is not complicated. It just requires will.

As I walked past those police officers, groceries in the bags I finally managed to buy, I said plainly, “We don’t have to live this way.”

They shrugged. They did not argue.

A deserter was once brought before Alexander the Great for judgment. Asked his name, the soldier nervously replied, “Alexander.”

The general paused.

“Either change your conduct,” he said, “or change your name.”

Names imply standards. So do cities.

If a city claims to be “America’s City,” its conduct should reflect it.

We should expect more — of ourselves, of our communities, of our elected officials, and of our courts.

America is not a nation of voiceless citizens. If standards are collapsing, enough of us have abdicated oversight and responsibility.

Disorder becomes permanent when citizens treat it as background noise.

The first act of resolve is refusing to call dysfunction normal.

We do not need another commission. We need resolve.

We don’t have to live this way.

​Colorado, Aurora colorado, Urban decline, American cities, America’s city, Opinion & analysis, Trust, Law and order 

Democratic Texas state Representative and current Senate candidate James Talarico has made a practice of using his “Christian” faith and background as a Presbyterian seminarian to push progressive causes, such as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and gun control, among others.

Earlier this week, in an interview with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show,” Talarico perpetuated an argument he’s presented multiple times, namely that the “religious right” mistakenly hyper-focuses on “abortion and gay marriage” — two issues, he argued, “that aren’t mentioned in the Bible” and “that Jesus never talked about.”

“Jesus gave us two commandments: Love God and love neighbor. And there was no exception to that second commandment. Love thy neighbor regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation. And it’s why I have fought so hard for the separation of church and state,” the Texas Democrat added.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace joins the host of conservative Christian voices denouncing Talarico as a false teacher, but his criticism goes far beyond relegating the progressive Christian to the realm of heretics.

“James Talarico is going to be Legion,” says Deace.

He explains the biblical pattern of Christian revival, which he believes is happening in the United States right now, regardless of whether or not America survives as a free nation.

First comes the sifting, he says, where God separates true believers from fake or lukewarm ones. Next is “the implementation of a new structure,” where God builds fresh ways of doing church outside of old, dead institutions. The final step is “mobilization.” Once His true followers are sifted and organized, God sends them out on mission to spread the gospel and make disciples locally and globally.

This revival process, Deace explains, has been repeating itself since the formation of the early Christian church.

However, the enemy has his own counterfeit pattern: First, shame people into hiding their faith, convincing them that it’s meant to be “private” between them and God. Then, push the lie of “secularization” — the idea that “there’s a neutral space where no one rules and no one is worshiped and no such space exists, ever has existed, or ever will,” says Deace. And finally, “replace” the faith altogether with an evil religion imposed by the state.

“We’re entering into this third stage now,” Deace warns.

James Talarico, whom Deace calls “an object and a vessel of malevolence,” is “not deceived; he’s the deceiver,” he says. “He is who Paul would have said in Acts, ‘You are a son of the devil.’ He knows what he is doing.”

To stay on the straight and narrow and avoid being duped by people like Talarico, Deace gives a piece of advice: “If sin and repentance and redemption are nowhere in their message, it doesn’t matter what else they say. … That is not the gospel. It is not. It’s a husk. Jesus called it a whitewashed tomb. The heart and soul of the gospel, the battle that was waged over your soul, and it is now being waged over your heart and mind, is because of sin, repentance, and redemption.”

“Guess what was completely and totally missing from James Talarico’s message? Sin, repentance, and redemption. So guess what you just heard none of from James Talarico? The gospel.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Steve deace, Steve deace show, Blazetv, Blaze media, Deace, Talarico, James talarico, Progressive christianity, Heresy, False teacher, Stephen colbert 

Eight years ago this month, Norma McCorvey died in a Texas nursing home, far from the cameras and courtrooms that once made her the most famous anonymous woman in America. There were no placards, no protests, no press.

She may be gone, but her name endures. The world knew her as “Jane Roe,” the plaintiff whose case redrew the legal landscape and reshaped the conscience of a nation.

Her story reflects a familiar pattern: individuals raised to symbolic status, then discarded once the moment passes.

Her beginnings weren’t marked by power, but by poverty and disorder. Born in rural Louisiana and raised in Texas, she grew up in a home shaped by absence and anger. Her father left early. Her mother battled alcoholism. Punishment was common; tenderness was rare. By adolescence, she had run away, fallen into petty crime, and entered state custody. Order came through institutions rather than through a steady home. Survival, not stability, shaped her youth.

Adulthood brought little relief. She married at 16 and left soon after. Her first child was taken and adopted by her mother. A second was placed for adoption. By 21, she was pregnant again — alone and impoverished, with few options and little guidance.

Alone and impoverished

Texas law allowed almost no abortions. Friends suggested that she claim rape to qualify. The claim failed. Through a chain of referrals, she met two young attorneys seeking a pregnant woman willing to challenge the statute. She agreed. She wanted an abortion. Instead, she became the primary figure in a legal battle she neither directed nor fully understood.

The case moved slowly. She never attended the hearings. She gave birth and placed the baby for adoption. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1973, she wasn’t celebrating. She later said the decision meant little to her at the time. The country changed. Her circumstances did not.

Yet the ruling transformed American life. Abortion became both a protected right and a permanent point of conflict. Clinics multiplied. Protest lines formed. The decision that bore her pseudonym ushered in a legal order under which millions of unborn children would be terminated. In the first half of last year alone, even after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, nearly 600,000 abortions occurred, averaging more than 3,000 each day. The scale is sobering.

An unexpected turn

In the years that followed, McCorvey worked around abortion clinics and publicly supported abortion rights. She spoke for the cause and lived within its orbit, lifted and used by larger forces.

Public relevance did not bring private peace. Her personal life remained unsettled. Addiction, loneliness, and fractured relationships followed her into middle age.

Then, in the mid-1990s, an unexpected turn.

While working at a Dallas clinic, she encountered pro-life volunteers who spoke with steady kindness. They addressed her not as a symbol but as a person. Conversation replaced confrontation. One day, she paused before a poster showing fetal development. The image stayed with her.

Soon after, she left her job.

RELATED: Bernard Nathanson: Abortion architect who found mercy in Christ

Sydney Morning Herald/Antonio Ribiero/Getty Images

Won by love

In 1995, she was baptized into evangelical Christianity in a backyard swimming pool. In her 1997 memoir “Won by Love,” McCorvey described the experience as a turning point, one that reshaped both her public advocacy and her private life.

Three years later, she entered the Catholic Church, a decision widely covered at the time by both secular and religious press. Her public stance changed. She described her role in Roe v. Wade as the greatest mistake of her life. She marched, protested, and testified, urging Americans to reconsider what the nation had embraced.

Her conversion drew admiration from some and skepticism from others. In a 2020 documentary, “AKA Jane Roe,” previously recorded interviews surfaced in which McCorvey suggested that financial incentives had influenced aspects of her pro-life advocacy.

The claims reignited debate over the sincerity of her conversion. Friends and clergy who knew her well disputed that account, describing a woman who prayed daily and took her faith seriously. The tensions remain unresolved. Human lives rarely fit neat narratives.

What remains clear is that her life traced a restless search for belonging and forgiveness. She was not a simple figure. At times blunt and belligerent, at others wounded and weary, she carried deep contradictions. She stood at the center of a historic decision, often seeming invisible within it.

Familiar terrain

Her story reflects a familiar pattern: individuals raised to symbolic status, then discarded once the moment passes. She served as a standard-bearer and later a cautionary tale — celebrated, contested, and set aside. Rarely was she treated as a person.

For Christians, this terrain is not unfamiliar. Scripture offers no flawless heroes, only flawed men and women redirected by grace. David fell. Peter denied. Paul persecuted. Grace did not erase their past; it changed their course.

No honest telling can minimize the consequences of Roe v. Wade. The decision reshaped law, medicine, and family life. McCorvey’s participation in that moment remains a grave part of her legacy.

Yet Christian faith insists that no life lies beyond redemption. The gospel does not deny sin; it denies that sin has the final word.

In her later years, friends described a woman quieter and gentler, less concerned with public approval and more attentive to eternity. She spoke of regret. She spoke as someone who looked back on what she had represented and felt the weight of it.

Eight years on, Norma McCorvey’s life resists easy telling. History will continue to debate her. Movements will continue to claim her. In the end, judgment belongs to God, who sees what no one else can.

​Faith, Norma mccorvey, Roe v. wade, Jane roe, Abortion, Pro-life, Lifestyle, Christianity, Converts