Who is Right? Left or Right

By Tom Kando

Unless you are in the natural sciences, a lot of what you say is debatable, at least up to a point. On the left side of the political spectrum we have liberals and Europeans (the two are nearly identical, ha, ha). On the right there are the Neanderthals spouting off some amazing things.Let me parry both an example of left-wing reasoning and right-wing reasoning which I came across recently:

1) On the left: We have just learned that the Amsterdam Court of Appeal is criminally prosecuting Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, because he made and propagated an anti-Koran film which depicts acts of violence by Muslims. Shame on you, Holland! You may not have a First Amendment, but surely you believe in freedom of the press, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, and political freedom? What’s wrong with you? Look at Pat Condell's commentary on this issue and see for yourself.

2) On the right, some of my dinosaur acquaintances recently re-visited those two asinine “hypotheses” which blamed America’s high crime rate, on (A) women acquiring the right to vote and (B) importing blacks (as slaves) from Africa.

My response, first to the gender-based hypothesis, then to the racial hypothesis:

A. Gender: The twisted logic here is that women are emotional and permissive, whereas men are more rational. Oh Yeah? It seems to me that testosterone is pretty good at clouding rational judgment. Ken Wilber sums up the male predicament throughout evolution: When the male of any species encounters another creature, he can only think of one of two things: f.... it or kill it. Testosterone will do that to you. So don’t tell me that patriarchy works better because males make better judgments. War is real rational, right? World War I (which also caused World War II) was really rational, right? Let me be an extreme feminist here and put it bluntly: There are only two things that men consistently do better than women: hurting and destroying.
Anyway, wacko theories are one thing, but empirical facts are another. A simple glance at the majority of countries in the world where women have the suffrage will immediately show that there is no correlation between that fact and high crime rates, so the theory is bs.
Finally, even if I were to agree with the silly notion that women are politically less capable than men, even then, it is absurd to argue that the 19th amendment was an error. The world progresses to ever higher stages of evolution through increasing, not exclusion. Exclusion is archaic and retrograde. Inclusion is the mark of progress.

B. Race: Okay, so different demographic groups have different rates of crime. Yes, the black crime rate is currently higher than the white crime rate (which in turn is higher than that of Asian-Americans). Do we, therefore, have to belabor the fact that if there were fewer African-Americans in the US, there would be less crime? What an obvious and useless thing to say! How does this help? Isn’t the main question what should be done, now?
And in order to answer that, shouldn’t we work on the causes of black crime, which is certainly neither race, nor the slave trade centuries ago. No, the primary cause is obviously socio-economic, and that, unlike what happened centuries ago, is something we can work on. You can’t go back in time! Remember: civilization progresses through inclusion, not exclusion!

And that brings me to my second point: Why do some people have this ugly focus on this one silly variable - race? There are many correlates of crime. Race is just one, and certainly not the most important one. Here are some other “hypotheses” you could consider:

Gender: men are far more criminal than women - always were, always will be. They commit 75% of all crimes, almost 90% of all violent crimes.
Age: young people are much more criminal than old people: 98% of all crimes are committed by people under 50, 2% over 50.
Region: The South has always been the most criminal region in the US.
Diet: Vegetarians are less criminal than meat eaters.
Socio-economic status: The lower class commits a majority of the 8 index crimes.
Urban-rural setting: Cities are the most criminal, suburbs less, and rural areas the least.
The middle child is more often delinquent than the first-born or the last-born.
Etc, etc.

You want to be silly? Okay: maybe we should outlaw meat eating? Maybe we should commit male infanticide. If we altered the sex ratio to 90-10, there would still be enough males to perpetuate the species, and we would be almost crime-free. Maybe it should be illegal to have more than two children.

My point is: The myopic focus on race as the most important correlate of crime is stupid, morally wrong, and it doesn’t help one bit. The high black crime rate will soon be a thing of the past. Black and white crime rates are already converging. All we need to do is help this along.
So what is the point of reminding us that importing Africans into the US long ago may have something to do with the country’s crime rate? The point is certainly not to offer any solutions.

I’ll tell you what the point it: It’s a point made by people who believe in white superiority. This is proven by the very arbitrariness of choosing race as the most important correlate of crime. After all, you could just as well focus on the high criminality of men, or young people, or meat eaters, or Southerners, or urbanites, or the lower class, or middle children, or some other subgroup. But then, that would not help feeling racially superior. In fact, as a male, you would have to admit that your gender is defective. Wouldn’t that be a bummer!
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