[GOPGuide]

Douthat is a "modernizing", "Centrist" Republican of the Frum ilk, btw.

[GOPGuide]

My preferred approach to reform, for instance, would marry a reduced incarceration rate to a substantial increase in the police presence on America's streets, We'll need the extra police to put the people just released from Jail under Douthat's plan BACK into jail. True Genius!

[GeronL]

Obama thinks jailing criminals is counterproductive too... they need some counseling is all I guess.

[roamer_1]

“Douthat” must mean “Dumbsh*t” in some language.

[Rockingham]

This is fantasy as public policy. Releasing prisoners and boosting the police presence in the Black community would lead to more arrests, more prosecutions, and more incarcerations . . . oops!

[browardchad]

My preferred approach to reform, for instance, would marry a reduced incarceration rate to a substantial increase in the police presence on America's streets, which if implemented clumsily (as most policy shifts are) could mean fewer black men behind bars, but more tragedies like the death of Ta-Nehisi's friend. But it's also an issue where conservatives could embrace policy shifts without compromising their core beliefs - the question of where to strike the "build prisons or hire cops" balance is a practical rather than a philosophical one - and in the process, I think, substantially change the way the Republican Party is perceived in the black community. Also, it would be the right thing to do.

I read the above this morning, and thought: no way the author could mean this, so I'll leave it for later.

Later arrived, and I read it again, and again, and at the Atlantic, and at the link to Ta-Nehisi, and I had to conclude that yes, the author means what he's written.

I guess I, or almost anyone else with half a brain, could rephrase it, but why bother? Let Dathout's idiocy-as-policy stand, naked, in the public square.