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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