Posted on 06/04/2007 9:09:06 PM PDT by jazusamo
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
To a small child, the reason he cannot do many things that he would like to do is that his parents won't let him. Many years later, maturity brings an understanding that there are underlying reasons for doing or not doing many things, and that his parents were essentially conduits for those reasons.
The truly dangerous period in life is the time when the child has learned the limits of his parents' control, and how to circumvent their control, but has not yet understood or accepted the underlying reasons for doing and not doing things. This adolescent period is one that some people -- intellectuals especially -- never outgrow.
The widespread and fervent use of the word "liberation" in a wide variety of contexts is one of the signs of the adolescent belief that only arbitrary rules and conventions stand in the way of doing whatever we want to do.
According to this vision of the world, the problems of all sorts of individuals and groups -- women, minorities, homosexuals, children -- are to be solved by liberating them from the restraints of laws, rules, conventions and standards.
They are to be liberated even from the threat of adverse judgments by other individuals. We are all to be "non-judgmental."
Two centuries ago, the great British legal scholar William Blackstone pointed out that there are some laws so old that no one remembers why they existed or what purpose they served then or now. But the bad consequences of repealing some of these laws have often made painfully clear what purpose they served.
Some of the painful consequences of various "liberations" that began in the 1960s have included the disintegration of families, skyrocketing crime rates, falling test scores in school, and record-breaking rates of teenage suicide.
A long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases sharply reversed during the 1960s, starting a new trend of escalating teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases, climaxed later by the AIDS epidemic.
Sometimes bad things happen because of adverse circumstances -- poverty or war, for example. But our post-1960s social disasters occurred during a long period of peace and unprecedented prosperity. Murder rates, for example, were much lower during the Great Depression of the 1930s and during World War II than they became after various "liberating" changes in the 1960s.
One of the signs of maturity is the ability to learn from experience. Some of us have learned and we have halted or reversed some of the adverse trends. For example, the quest for those elusive "root causes" of crime, so dear to the political left, has been put aside in favor of locking up more criminals -- and the crime rate has declined.
The left is upset that we have so many people behind bars and lament how much it is costing to keep them there. They do not even bother to estimate how much it would cost to turn them loose.
The left has never understood why property rights are a big deal, except to fat cats who own a lot of property. Through legislation and judicial rulings, property rights have been eroded with rent control laws, expansive concepts of eminent domain, and all sorts of environmental restrictions.
Some of the biggest losers have been people of very modest incomes and some of the biggest winners have been fat cats who are able to use political muscle and activist judges to violate other people's property rights.
Politicians in cities around the country violate property rights regularly by seizing homes in working-class neighborhoods and demolishing whole sectors of the city, in order to turn the land over to people who will build shopping malls, gambling casinos, and other things that will pay more taxes than the homeowners are paying.
That's why property rights were put in the Constitution in the first place, to keep politicians from doing things like that. But the adolescent intellectuals of our time have promoted the notion that property rights are just arbitrary rules to protect the rich.
Many academics and federal judges are sufficiently insulated from reality by tenure that they never have to grow up.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.
Ping
“Some of the painful consequences of various “liberations” that began in the 1960s have included the disintegration of families, skyrocketing crime rates, falling test scores in school, and record-breaking rates of teenage suicide.
A long downward trend in teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases sharply reversed during the 1960s, starting a new trend of escalating teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases, climaxed later by the AIDS epidemic.”
The 60’s was a horrible time to be a teenager.
I saw the same thing in my 30 year chip-making career, "why would someone put this in the specifications two decades ago." We quickly learned after it was removed, lol.
“Many academics and federal judges are sufficiently insulated from reality by tenure that they never have to grow up”
Tom you missed celebrities, and trust fund babies....you are only 99 percent perfect : )
It's been my observation that so many of the problems in our current culture come about because people refuse to grow up. They are out of control spoiled brats, and their lives are ruled by childish whims.
My advice is often either "Grow up!" or "Be a man!" If only we could spank the childishness out of these idiots.
Dr. Sowell Rocks!
As a young man starting a family then it was evident to me that things weren't going in the right direction but I didn't really realize how serious a problem it was.
Home run (another one)!!!!
-snip-
What was the message of the social programs that came out of LBJ's Great Society?
One of the most devastating to the family was that if an unwed woman became pregnant, moved out of the home of her parents, did not name or know who the father was, then Big Daddy in Washington would provide for all her essential needs.
Ergo she no longer needed a husband or the support of her family. In fact, the more children she had out of wedlock, the more money she would receive from the government. This program was the death knell for many families, especially in the black community.
Unfortunately many black men saw this as the best of all possible worlds. They could father as many children as they wanted, from multiple women, without ever having to accept the responsibility of fatherhood. Many women rejected marriage in favor of a boyfriend who could slip in the back door and not jeopardize her government check.
-snip-
--http://soapbox.townhall.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/9/9/193159/6343
Exactly...Unfortunately many never do grow up.
I’ll go for that if we can fit Duncan Hunter in there somewhere too. :-)
I was 15 in 1969. Drugs came in, and loose morals. I was an athlete and an honors student. Not very popular with the teenage “jet set” : )
So true and I’ll never forget LBJ saying we’re going to take from the haves and give to the have-nots. That was unbelievable to me that even he’d say that.
BTTT
Thomas Sowell is a Christmas gift to us all with every column. What a brilliant and insightful person.
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