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?
