Back to the Future on Crime
19th May 2020
Steven Hayward at Powerline peers behind the curtain.
One of Ronald Reagan’s most cutting one-liners back in the 1960s was, “A liberal’s idea of being tough on crime is handing out longer suspended sentences.” Those were the days of extreme leniency on crime amidst a sharply rising crime rate. The liberal answer was always that we needed to deal with the “root causes” of crime, ignoring that the root cause of crime is criminals.
Fast forward 50 years, and we have the mania for “no-bail” offenses, which is merely the first stepping stone for the liberal drive to decriminalize crime. You think I jest, but the “advanced thinking” on the intellectual left is that “crime” is a social construct through which the middle class bolsters its “white supremacy” or something. No, seriously—this is what they think.