By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
When teenage thugs are called "troubled youth"
by people on the political left, that tells us more about the mindset of the
left than about these young hoodlums.
Seldom is there a speck of evidence that the thugs are
troubled, and often there is ample evidence that they are in fact enjoying
themselves, as they create trouble and dangers for others.
Why then the built-in excuse, when juvenile hoodlums are
called "troubled youth" and mass murderers are just assumed to be
"insane"?
At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has
struggled to avoid facing the plain fact of evil -- that some people simply
choose to do things that they know to be wrong when they do them. Every kind of
excuse, from poverty to an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain
and excuse evil.
All the people who have come out of poverty or unhappy
childhoods, or both, and become decent and productive human beings, are
ignored. So are the evils committed by people raised in wealth and privilege,
including kings, conquerors and slaveowners.
Why has evil been such a hard concept for many on the
left to accept? The basic agenda of the left is to change external conditions.
But what if the problem is internal? What if the real problem is the cussedness
of human beings?
Rousseau denied this in the 18th century and the left has
been denying it ever since. Why? Self preservation.
If the things that the left wants to control --
institutions and government policy -- are not the most important factors in the
world's problems, then what role is there for the left?
What if it is things like the family, the culture and the
traditions that make a more positive difference than the bright new government
"solutions" that the left is constantly coming up with? What if
seeking "the root causes of crime" is not nearly as effective as
locking up criminals? The hard facts show that the murder rate was going down
for decades under the old traditional practices so disdained by the left
intelligentsia, before the bright new ideas of the left went into effect in the
1960s -- after which crime and violence skyrocketed.
What happened when old-fashioned ideas about sex were
replaced in the 1960s by the bright new ideas of the left that were introduced
into the schools as "sex education" that was supposed to reduce
teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases?
Both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases
had been going down for years. But that trend suddenly reversed in the 1960s
and hit new highs.
One of the oldest and most dogmatic of the crusades of
the left has been disarmament, both of individuals and of nations. Again, the
focus of the left has been on the externals -- the weapons in this case.
If weapons were the problem, then gun control laws at
home and international disarmament agreements abroad might be the answer. But
if evil people who care no more for laws or treaties than they do for other
people's lives are the problem, then disarmament means making decent,
law-abiding people more vulnerable to evil people.
Since belief in disarmament has been a major feature of
the left since the 18th century, in countries around the world, you might think
that by now there would be lots of evidence to substantiate their beliefs.
But evidence on whether gun control laws actually reduce
crime rates in general, or murder rates in particular, is seldom mentioned by
gun control advocates. It is just assumed in passing that of course tighter gun
control laws will reduce murders.
But the hard facts do not back up that assumption. That
is why it is the critics of gun control who rely heavily on empirical evidence,
as in books like "More Guns, Less Crime" by John Lott and "Guns
and Violence" by Joyce Lee Malcolm.
National disarmament has an even worse record. Both
Britain and America neglected their military forces between the two World Wars,
while Germany and Japan armed to the teeth. Many British and American soldiers
paid with their lives for their countries' initially inadequate military
equipment in World War II.
But what are mere facts compared to the heady vision of
the left?
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