Gary Horton’s August 5th rant of the week, “It’s Time to Reimagine Law and Order” (link), certainly touched all the bases we’ve come to expect from the radical left recently as they relate to “fixing” our allegedly broken law enforcement system.
Throughout his column Horton repeatedly refers to America’s “incarceration rate” as the rationalization for his position: “Today, America incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation. At 700 inmates per 100,000 residents, we top arch-bad guys Cuba by 30%, Russia by 200%, China by 540%, and repressive Iran by 230%.”
He apparently thinks such communist “paradises” as Cuba et al are going to accurately report imprisonment rates which reflect badly on their utopias. Not to mention that they have euphemistically designated “re-education” camps that aren’t counted as prisons, and in which people aren’t “incarcerated”; they’re “cured”. Also not to mention that in those countries boatloads of people simply… disappear.
When I posted that observation as an online comment Horton replied: “Look at the company we’re not only keeping, but exceeding… When you compare the US to other modern industrial democratic nations, the difference is beyond stark. Canada, Germany, England, Australia…. we are multiples and multiples higher in incarceration. They are not countries gone wild, Brian. They are nice places to live. So – please explain WHY we have this odd outlier outcome – and how can we fix it? How would you fix it?”
But as I responded there, I’m not going to “explain” anything because I reject the entire notion that incarceration rates are meaningful in any way as they pertain to this country. Some people commit criminal acts. If they get caught and convicted in a public trial they get locked up (except maybe in Commiefornia). It’s as simple as that.
If we were talking about some police state in which people get locked up for “thought crimes” or political activities he might then have a case. But that’s not the case here. We’re unique in the world in that we have rights and freedoms that are constitutionally guaranteed. As far as I’m concerned we’re the gold standard. So I don’t care what other countries are doing. They have nothing for us to emulate; they should be trying to emulate us. I’ve been to every one of those countries he mentioned in his comment, and well over a dozen more, and there’s not a single one of them in which I’d prefer to live rather than here.
Are we perfect? Of course not; nothing created by humans is. But the idea that this country is, or is becoming, some kind of police state is simply absurd.
Horton is spouting the same rhetorical nonsense we’re getting from the antifa/BLM radicals who are creating such havoc across the country, but he’s dressing it up in better language. It’s a sorry attempt to slather lipstick on a pig.
©Brian Baker 2020
(Published 21 August 2020 at my blog and in The Signal)
The View from the Island 
Brian,
Great noodling, I subscribe to your take on our great country. Well done and well said.
Thanks for those kind words, Mike. I appreciate it.
Welcome to another episode of ‘Leftist Reasoning 101,’ Brian, where thinking is not a prerequisite. These are the same people who, with the usual absence of objective analysis, have declared that the differences in the way COVID affects the black population is proof of “systematic racism.”
The leftist agenda cannot survive objective reasoning, thoughtful analysis and rigorous debate; therefore these things have been eradicated, paving the way for absurd proposals – “Green New Deal,” defunding police, reparations to non-slaves – that in saner times would have been righteously rejected out of hand. We need a cure for the mental disorder of liberalism, and we need it quick.
CW… LOL!
Yes, the masking thing. A topic of utter ridicule for me, as I wrote in my last column. A virus that selectively infects people based on, apparently, their political leanings, hence the immunity of antifa and BLM.
This whole thing is Orange Man Bad gone to absurd extremes.
Good point about communist countries.
Something I’m curious about — in the US, I’ve read that over 90% of felony convictions are due to plea bargains and not an actual trial. If a criminal is facing a huge list of charges, he will be incentivized to do a plea bargain and possibly plead guilty to things he never did.
Is there any truth to this article?
https://theoutline.com/post/2066/most-criminal-cases-end-in-plea-bargains-not-trials?zd=1&zi=hphiyvwj
That’s an interesting topic, Chris. It’s factually correct that the vast majority of criminal cases are settled with a plea bargain (my bonafides: my PI practice specialized in criminal matters, and I spent 2 years as in-house investigator for a criminal defense firm), but the article’s claim that defendants who accept such deals are often “… people who say they didn’t commit a crime” is actually pretty funny to anyone who’s ever worked in the system. Go to any prison and talk to the inmates and you’ll quickly learn that almost everyone there is “innocent”. “Some other dude did it”, or the SODDI Defense, is pretty much de rigeur.
Thank you, thank you, Brian. It’s always nice to see you are still there to sanely watch over the local nonsense. I have a commentary out tomorrow that will draw a few of the firing squad. Hello to all back there. The kids sure are growling up! Betty
Sent from my iPad
>
Thanks, Betty! Hope you guys are doing well. I’m looking forward to reading yours tomorrow.
About the offspring: ain’t it amazing? What a hoot!