The Right is Right. The Left is Wrong.

One of the most sacred opinions among American liberals is that crime is largely the result of social injustice. People are poor because they don't have any money. People commit crimes because they are poor. Give people money, and both poverty and crime will diminish and disappear.

It's an attractive view because it tells you what to do about crime. Unfortunately, it's wrong. Richard Cohen, a liberal in good standing, but also a genuinely independent thinker, had the courage to point this out.

The good news is that crime is again down across the nation -- in big cities, small cities, flourishing cities and cities that are not for the timid. Surprisingly, this has happened in the teeth of the Great Recession, meaning that those disposed to attribute criminality to poverty -- my view at one time -- have some strenuous rethinking to do. It could be, as conservatives have insisted all along, that crime is committed by criminals. For liberals, this is bad news indeed.

Ideas have to mean something to be ideas, and if the liberal idea means anything it is that increased poverty and crime should be correlated, and prosperity and decreases in crime likewise. As Cohen shows, they aren't. As the American economy went south in 2008, crime went south with it.

It now seems fairly clear that something akin to culture and not economics is the root cause of crime. By and large everyday people do not go into a life of crime because they have been laid off or their home is worth less than their mortgage. They do something else, but whatever it is, it does not generally entail packing heat. Once this becomes an accepted truth, criminals will lose what status they still retain as victims.

In fact, this has been clear for many decades. The American economy enjoyed phenomenal growth between the end of the Second World War and the 1980's. During that same time we suffered an explosive growth of violent crime. But Cohen, at least, is finally seeing the writing on the wall.

[Liberal social policy] made victims of criminals and criminals of victims (all wealth comes from theft, etc.) -- and in so doing, insulted the law-abiding poor who somehow lacked the wit to appreciate their historic plight. This ideology was mocked by Stephen Sondheim in his lyrics for the "West Side Story" song "Gee, Officer Krupke":

"Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, you gotta understand,
it's just our bringin' up-ke that gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies, our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!"

In other words, all the gang members were the unavoidable products of their environment.

Common sense tells you that the environment has to play a role and the truly desperate will sometimes break the law -- like Victor Hugo's impoverished Jean Valjean, who stole bread for his sister's children. But the latest crime statistics strongly suggest that bad times do not necessarily make bad people. Bad character does.

As conservatives has insisted all along, it isn't society that is responsible for crime, it's criminals.

The lesson learned here isn't restricted to crime. Barack Obama ran on a promise that he would restore America's image in the world by being less arrogant and belligerent than his predecessor. He would reach out to the problem children of the new world order, Iran, North Korea, Syria, the Palestinians, etc., and really listen to their concerns. They in turn would realize that we don't really want to hurt them, and real progress would be made on all fronts.

How's that workin' out? Can one point to progress on any front of American foreign policy? In these pages I have praised Obama for putting his cards on the table. Now we can test whether a kinder, gentler foreign policy will melt the hearts of hardhearted dictators. Well, we tested. It turns out that the root cause of international criminality isn't American arrogance and belligerence. It's international criminals.

The difference between the left and the right in America isn't that there are better people on the one side than the other. There are honest, thoughtful, and decent people on both sides, and both sides have their share of scoundrels. The difference is that, on the important questions, the right is right and the left is wrong.

Comments

[Donald Pay]

Well, of course. It's mostly greed, and greed afflicts the poor and the wealthy, and even those of us in the shrinking middle. What matters, of course, is which crimes society actually sanctions. We lock up the guy who robs the bank, but the bank president who robs from the people through deception escapes justice. In fact, they get bailed out in the literal and figurative sense, and receive bonuses. The guy who robs the corner gas station is put in the slammer. The oil company exec...well, we'll see what happens with the BP oil spill, but precious few people who rob us of our clean environment do any time. Sometimes the crooks run the show--I'd put Cheney in that category. Tax cheating, of course, is a bipartisan crime. Our culture tends to honor the rich thugs with more benefits. We lock up the ones who can't afford high-priced defense attorneys.

[George Mason]

Poor Donald has a serious case of BDS. The sufferers rave on about criminality among their political opposites and yet they can never provide any evidence. Here we are 10 years on from the onset of BDS among the loony left and still waiting for something concrete. The poor souls believe that if the just keep up a mindless repetition of their rants they will some how become true. Maybe Donald can sit down and have a long talk with his banker.
On the more serious topic the prime motivator behind violent crime for the last 40 years has been the drug trade. The FBI in years past has attributed a large percentage of the murders committed in this country to the illegal drug trade. If you want to attribute that to greed you may have something.

[Donald Pay]

Glad you brought up drugs. You can see the difference in who gets penalized for similar behavior in the drug trade right in Pierre, South Dakota. There was a huge problem with drugs in Pierre before, during and just after the first Janklow administration. Tough as Janklow was on law and order issues, it didn't seem to filter down to putting the upstanding Republican bureaucrats in jail. Most of the problem centered around people in state government, so to clean up the problem Governor Mickelson had state funded treatment plans for those people. I kinda think that didn't happen for others.

[Magnolia]

Just know the difference between a politician and a statesman.

A politician only thinks to the next election while a statesman thinks to the next generation.

Seen any good statesman lately?