A free society needs people with consciences. The vast majority of people must obey the law voluntarily. If people don’t conform themselves to the law, someone will either have to compel them to do so or protect the public when they do not. It costs a great deal of money to catch, convict, and incarcerate lawbreakers — not to mention that the surveillance and monitoring of potential criminals tax everybody’s freedom if habitual lawbreakers comprise too large a percentage of the population.
The basic self-control and reciprocity that a free society takes for granted do not develop automatically. Conscience development takes place in childhood. Children need to develop empathy so they will care whether they hurt someone or whether they treat others fairly. They need to develop self-control so they can follow through on these impulses and do the right thing even if it might benefit them to do otherwise.
All this development takes place inside the family. Children attach to the rest of the human race through their first relationships with their parents. They learn reciprocity, trust, and empathy from these primal relationships. Disrupting those foundational relations has a major negative impact on children as well as on the people around them. In particular, children of single parents — or completely absent parents — are more likely to commit crimes.
Without two parents, working together as a team, the child has more difficulty learning the combination of empathy, reciprocity, fairness, and self-command that people ordinarily take for granted. If the child does not learn this at home, society will have to manage his behavior in some other way. He may have to be rehabilitated, incarcerated, or otherwise restrained. In this case, prisons will substitute for parents.
I am reading her book Love and Economics right now, and this argument is in the first couple of chapters, which is how I found this article.
Major Nidal Hasan had his first hearing in the Ft. Hood murder case. The hearing was held in the hospital. His lawyer says he is paralyzed from the chest down, incontinent and in severe pain.
[…]How barbaric that the military will seek to kill a man with no sensation in his body from the chest down. He might prefer it (I certainly would) but it’s inexusable behavior for a civilized society and way beyond the pale of decency.
One wonders what she would say to the families of the victims.
The death penalty as a deterrent to future crimes
The trouble with Democrats is that they make decisions based on feelings and intentions, instead of based on knowledge and results. No one likes the death penalty, but that’s not the point of it. The point of the death penalty is that is deters future crimes.
“Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it,” said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. “The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.”
A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. “The results are robust, they don’t really go away,” he said. “I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) – what am I going to do, hide them?”
Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory – if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).
[…]Among the conclusions:
– Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).
– The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.
– Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.
So, removing the death penalty encourages criminals to commit more crime. And this also applies to terrorism. If you want to coddle captured terrorists by giving them civilian trials and life imprisonment, instead of military trials and death sentences, then you get more terrorism.
Navy SEALS face criminal charges after capturing terrorist
Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.
The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.
Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.
Just consider the incentives being created by this prosecution of Navy SEALS. This is exactly what caused the Army and the FBI to keep silent when Major Nidal Hasan was giving all the warning signs of committing a terrorist attack, including communicating with terrorists. The Army and the FBI didn’t want to face the wrath of politically correct lawyers and judges.
So we have the left opposing the death penalty for terrorism on the one hand, and on the other hand the left is in favor of prosecuting Navy SEALs and CIA interrogators for their work in stopping terrorism.
How Modern Liberals Think
If you want to understand why people on the left call evil good and call good evil, be sure and watch Evan Sayet’s speech at the Heritage Foundation, entitled “How Modern Liberals Think”.
Here’s the lecture:
Democrats aren’t not serious about evil, and that disqualifies them from any office involving national security. In my opinion, they are not qualified to do anything of any importance.
This article was sent to me by my friend Andrew. It’s by Marcia Segelstein.
Marcia is trying to make the same point about sex that Miriam Grossmann made in her book “Unprotected”. The point is that although bureaucrats and educrats love to tell people about the riskiness of behaviors like smoking and obesity, they don’t tell people the truth about the dangers of casual sex, because they don’t want to antagonize special interest groups like feminists and gay activists.
In the article, Marcia talks about the mental effects of casual sex. She talks about dopamine first, but the one I want to tell you about is called oxytocin. It is very important that you parents of young ladies understand this and present this evidence to your daughters. (The male version of this phenomenon is also explained in the article, it’s called vasopressin).
Excerpt:
Oxytocin is another important brain chemical we are now learning more about. Oxytocin helps females, in particular, bond with other people. When a new mother breastfeeds her infant, for example, oxytocin floods her brain. The effect is powerful. She feels a strong desire to be with her baby, and is willing to suffer the sleepless nights and inconveniences that come with having a baby.
Oxytocin also helps females bond with men. When a woman and man touch each other in a loving way, oxytocin is released in her brain. It makes her want more of that loving touch, and she begins to feel a bond with her partner. Sexual intercourse leads to the release of even more oxytocin, a desire to repeat the contact, and even stronger bonding. But, like dopamine, oxytocin is values-neutral. It’s a chemical reaction, or, as the authors write: “[I]t is an involuntary process that cannot distinguish between a one-night stand and a lifelong soul mate. Oxytocin can cause a woman to bond to a man even during what was expected to be a short-term sexual relationship.” So when that short-term relationship ends, the emotional fallout can be devastating, thanks to oxytocin.
Another significant finding about oxytocin is that it produces feelings of trust. That can be good or bad, depending on the situation. “While the hormonal effect of oxytocin is ideal for marriage, it can cause problems for the unmarried woman or girl who is approached by a man desiring sex….[T]he warning is that a woman’s brain can cause her to be blindsided by a bad relationship that she thought was good because of the physical contact and the oxytocin response it generates.”
This is why Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse says that the only smart sex is married sex. Otherwise you are just coarsening your own self. Neil Simpson calls this the duct tape theory of sex. He explains why sex is like duct tape here. Don’t order your children around – give them the data so they understand the why of chastity.
WINTERY KNIGHT 