"During the 1940s, my family lived in North Philadelphia's Richard Allen housing project. Many families didn't lock doors until late at night, if ever. No one ever thought of installing bars on their windows. Hot, humid summer nights found many people sleeping outside on balconies or lawn chairs. Starting in the '60s and '70s, doing the same in some neighborhoods would have been tantamount to committing suicide. Keep in mind that the 1940s and '50s were a time of gross racial discrimination, high black poverty and few opportunities compared to today. The fact that black neighborhoods were far more civilized at that time should give pause to the excuses of today that blames today's pathology on poverty and discrimination. Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we've become."
(quoted at Booker Rising)
5 comments:
An illegitimacy rate among black Americans rising from the low twenties (percentage terms) in the 1950s to well over 70 today (more like 99 in the cities) is of course, not worthy of any attention at all from liberal sociologists.
I have a vague memory of once reading someone who argued that LBJ's welfare state had a much greater demoralising effect on blacks than on whites. I can't remember whether he had an explanation for it.
In the words of Edmund Burke:
"men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
As I keep asking libertarians - how do you prevent libertarianism descending into libertinism?
As I keep asking everyone - how can the rule of law be expected to work when there isn't the expectation that you will be caught and punished for your crime?
As I like to put it - in the absence of an omnipresent God, the only alternative to restrain immoral and illegal behaviour is an omnipresent state.
That means more laws, more restrictions on what you can and can not do and more intrusive monitoring and surveillance of ordinary people going about their entirely law-abiding business.
"Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society."
Superb, and the complete antithesis of progressive liberal belief.
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