The traditional American view of people as Individuals REQUIRES swift justice. Instead, the Progressives see not individual criminals but Society as a whole being an entire group – which deserves to be punished.
…It is easy to tar opponents of gun control as “soft on crime.” It is easy to tar opponents of prohibition as “soft on abuse.” But in a strange sense, both gun control and prohibition grow out of softness. A system with the moral courage to harshly, swiftly, and surely punish violence would have little need of gun control. A system with the moral courage to harshly, swiftly, and surely punish abusers for stealing, trespassing, vandalizing, and defiling would have little need of prohibition.
In both cases, we haphazardly punish millions of innocents because we refuse to decisively punish thousands of clear-cut criminals.
-Bryan Caplan (Abusers Give Vice a Bad Name)
The many, in their eyes, are just as guilty as any of its individuals, so the many WILL be punished for the activities of a very few. There is no Justice in that and CERTAINLY no sense of mercy or propitiation, or forgiveness. Only “future guilt.”
CAplan’s remarks run a bit long, but I liked bits and thought you should take note:
- “…the typical user. Sure, they rarely experience severe personal blowback. But they normalize deviant behavior.
- …The difference between me and normal observers: I don’t consider extreme abusers or “addicts” to be victims. I consider them victimizers. They aren’t a symptom of a greater social problem. They are the greater social problem. Abusers have and continue to make evil choices. Granted, it logically possible to end up on Fentanyl Row through tremendously bad luck. Empirically, however, everything I’ve read on poverty convinces me that the root cause of such residence is almost invariably extraordinarily irresponsible behavior.
HT | Instapundit
