A
couple of days ago I reported a liberal's assertion that conservatives
seem "unwilling or unable to engage in issues that are fundamental to
the future of mankind". In the last few days we've seen evidence of
what social conservatives, at least (economic conservatives have different preoccupations), are engaged in, to the point of obsession: Crime, criminals, and punishment. The social conservative media are full of news and hand-wringing about the following issues, all of them crime-related:
- The
War on Terror (actually a War on the Desperate) -- currently focused,
of course, on the heroic foiling of the British criminal airline
bombing plot, the heroic Israeli war with criminal suicide bombers and
the criminal Hizbollah (who are armed by the criminal Iranians), and
why the botched wars against tyrants in Iraq and Afghanistan are not
now civil wars and are still 'winnable'. In the minds of social
conservatives, Al Qaeda is the master criminal behind all of these
activities.
- The War on Drugs -- to social conservatives,
everyone in this is a war is a criminal (users are morally weak and
reprehensible, criminal facilitators, not victims)
- Capital Punishment -- if you don't favour state murder of criminals, you're 'soft on crime'
- Anti-Abortion
and Anti-Birth Control -- abortion is murder and anyone who has one or
sanctions one is a criminal; same for birth control (it's just
preemptive abortion)
- Juvenile Crime -- those sneaky juvenile
criminals hide behind liberal laws that suggest they aren't yet mature
enough to be aware that what they're doing is criminal (Canadian
right-wing PM Harper is now obsessing about lowering the age at which
you can be convicted of a crime from 12 to 10)
- Stricter Sentencing, More Prisons, More Discipline in Prisons, Less Parole
- Child Porn, Child Predators (can someone explain to me why the Ramsey case is real news anywhere outside Boulder Colorado?)
- Keeping
Guns Away from Criminals -- while the guys in the white hats are
constitutionally entitled to shoot any suspected criminal ("we know 'em
when we see 'em") with military-grade weapons (enough to kill the whole
gang single handed) on sight
- Anti-Homosexuality
- Anti-Right-to-Die
-- suicide is morally criminal, and so is abetting it (the publicity
for the Ramsey case echoes the publicity for the Schiavo case)
- Disease
Pandemics and Natural Disasters -- these are vexing to social
conservatives, because the 'criminal' is nature, and they don't know
how to arrest nature (but they're working on it!)
- Street and Gang Crime and Drive-By Shootings
- Home Invasions
- Domestic Crimes (the more lurid the better)
Read or listen to any social conservative media outlet and you will quickly get the impression that crime is all
they are engaged in -- rare mentions of global warming or any issues
"fundamental to the future of mankind" are only brought up for denial
or belittling.
How do we understand this obsession with crime?
Is it pathological (are social conservatives suffering from a kind of
endemic mental illness)? What's behind it -- an exaggerated sense of
danger, insecurity and learned helplessness? Is it learned (spread)
from peers and parents? Is it generally brought on by some terrible,
traumatizing personal experience?
We need all the help we can
get with the issues "fundamental to the future of mankind". If we want
to recruit and engage social conservatives to work with us on these
issues, we have to get them over their single-minded obsession with
crime, criminals, and punishment. Can anyone suggest a cure? |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
