Posted on 08/23/2006 7:21:50 PM PDT by Gordongekko909
The general mindset of the political left is similar from country to country and even from century to century.
The softness toward dangerous criminals found in such 18th century writers as William Godwin and Condorcet has its echo today among those who hold protest vigils at the executions of murderers and who complain that we are not being nice enough to the cutthroats imprisoned at Guantanamo.
The specific issues change from place to place and from time to time but the mindset remains remarkably similar. What is also different from country to country and from one era to another is the amount of resistance encountered by the left, which determines how far they can go in practice.
The United States has always been more resistant to the left than most European countries have been. Often we can see where the American left is headed by seeing where the European left has arrived.
A new book on crime in Britain shows what happens when the mindset of the left prevails throughout the criminal justice system. That book is titled "A Land Fit for Criminals" by David Fraser.
Within living memory, Britain was one of the most law-abiding nations on the face of the earth. When Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew visited London right after World War II, he was so impressed with the honesty of the British and their respect for law and order that he returned home determined to make Singapore the same way.
Today it is Singapore that is one of the most law-abiding nations in the world while Britain's crime rate has risen to the point where, for the first time, it now exceeds the crime rate in the United States.
What happened in the intervening years was the rise of the British left's dogmas about crime to complete domination of the country's legal system and its political and media elites.
Today, a burglar caught in the act by the police in Britain is almost certain to get a warning. If he has previous burglary convictions, he may get a sterner warning. But he is unlikely to face anything so draconian as being put behind bars.
Burglary has been described as a "minor" offense by leaders of both the Conservative and Labor parties in Britain. Rare cases where burglars are put in prison are criticized by the media.
The left's ideology on crime, including their disdain for property crimes, has spread across the political spectrum to all who wish to be considered up to date. That ideology is essentially the same on both sides of the Atlantic but in Britain it has achieved far greater unchallenged dominance.
Among the dogmas of the left is that putting people in prison fails to reduce crime and that the social "root causes" of crime must be dealt with to prevent it beforehand and that "rehabilitation" through various programs "in the community" are more effective than locking up criminals.
None of this is new and the rationales for it go back at least two centuries. What is remarkable is how mountains of hard evidence to the contrary have been ignored, evaded, or simply lied about, on both sides of the Atlantic.
David Fraser's book "A Land Fit for Criminals" examines that evidence at length and exposes the fraudulence of the claims used to try to justify continuing to be lenient to criminals as crime rates have soared in Britain.
There are similar mountains of evidence against the left's crime dogmas in the United States and this evidence is similarly ignored, evaded or lied about by those on the left. It is just that the left faces stronger opposition here so that it has not achieved the pervasive dominance that it has in Britain -- yet.
In both countries, ideologues have the support of "practical" politicians and bureaucrats who simply do not want to spend the money needed to build and maintain enough prisons to put career criminals away for many years.
Those weighing costs and benefits define "costs" as government expenditures. But the costs paid by the public, just in economic terms, vastly exceed the cost of more prisons. But that does not count for either the ideologues or the "practical" politicians and criminal justice bureaucrats.
...which is chock full of useless idiots who have bucketfulls of misplaced compassion for the criminals and dictators of the world.
Please put me on the ping list.
...I was thinking about the criminals themselves, but yeah.
"I wonder what exactly it is that seems to make Europe inherently more leftist than the States?"
I think it was our educational system that kept us from rotting as fast as they.
You can't sell socialism to a well-informed, reasonable person.
Added! Pickin' up a lot of new people today. Must have something to do with pinging soon after posting.
Another great piece.
Dr. Sowell is a remarkable man with the kind of mind and witing talent that always amazes me.
Um, sorry to nitpick, but I believe that the first word quoted above should be "it's," as in a contraction of "it is."
<< .... the .... left's dogmas about crime to complete domination of the country's legal system and its political and media elites. >>
Doctor Sowell quietly nails it.
And describes the inevitable consequence of the now more than seven-decades-long activist-"Democrat" penetration and takeover of every instrument of political, educational, media, bureaucratic, police and judicial influence, authority and power that has occurred in my America.
Any who cannot see, from both the dead and decadent Euro-peon example and from the awful examples of our own "dark-towns," (Used courtesy of Ken Hamblin, The Black Avenger) where we our culture and our American Civilization are also are headed, are either of the manifestation of evil we call "the left" and are thus psychotic or are functionally blind and/or are effectively retarded.
You can't sell socialism to a well-informed, reasonable person.
Please add me to your ping list. Thanks!
Guns have two enemies: 1) rust 2) liberal politicians. This was on a church sign I passed last week. It is all to true. Memphis, TN has had 110 murders so far this year. A record number.
True. But I'd go a step further and posit that communism and marxism has permeated the dem party and the world. People forget that the communists, mainly russian and chinese, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to infiltrate western societies with the intent being to change our way of thinking.
Freepers have all heard it if they've been around long enough. Up is down, black is white and now, right is wrong so wrong MUST be right. It is now "cool" to dress down and look like crap. It is admirable to underachieve and live as a hermit so one doesn't harm the earth. No moral judgements are to be made for all societies are equal. That is the path we're taking and communism and previous oppresive societies have had a great part in that.
Dr. Sowell, brilliant as usual.
Liberals do not take responsibility for their own bad behavior or failings. Think: Katrina prep and response.
Think: American cities run by Dem machines, such as Detroit, Baltimore, DC, New Orleans.
"It is not entirely clear to me that our educational system is producing well-informed people."
I wrote in the past tense. I was thinking of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
Facts? We don' need no steenkin' facts!
<< True. But I'd go a step further and posit that communism and marxism has permeated the dem party and the world. People forget that the communists, mainly russian and chinese, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to infiltrate western societies with the intent being to change our way of thinking.
Freepers have all heard it if they've been around long enough. Up is down, black is white and now, right is wrong so wrong MUST be right. It is now "cool" to dress down and look like crap. It is admirable to underachieve and live as a hermit so one doesn't harm the earth. No moral judgements are to be made for all societies are equal. That is the path we're taking and communism and previous oppresive societies have had a great part in that >>
Absolutely. Several generations of emasculated, feminized, infantalized -- and as-often-as-not sodomist-ized American "men" have now allowed their "women" to dress them as children.
And the influences of the Frankfurt School are alive and well and are insidiously promulgated and indoctrinated in successive generations of our children via the verbalized bowel burblings that are passed as thoughts and ideas among the self-annointed, self-appointed and self-perpetuating academic and other elites that comprise both our ruling oligarchy and our, much more dangerous, various levels of governments' permenant bureaucracies.
<< Dr. Sowell is right again. The UK is ahead of us on ignoring property crimes but they're leading us down the path. >>
True.
Though the Brits have never had the same Right to Private Property that was once guaranteed every (Sovereign) American by our Constitution.
That part of our founding Law came from a German School.
But you're right in that our elites having Europeonized our laws and have set our American Civilization into the swirling motion that will ensure, unless we can ever reverse the flow and restore our beloved FRaternal Republic, that we follow the dead and decadent Brits and other Euro-peons into the new and maybe permenant dark ages inevitably in store for all of them.
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