Maverick Philosopher

Does Poverty Cause Crime?

You've heard me say more than once that poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue.  Heather MacDonald provides empirical confirmation in A Crime Theory Demolished.  Lawlessness has fallen while joblessness has risen.

Eric Hoffer on the 'Root Causes' of Crime

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 57:

Poverty causes crime! That is what they are always shoving down our throats, the misbegotten bastards! What crap! Poverty does not cause crime. If it did we would have been buried in crime for most of our history . . . .

Why is common sense like this incomprehensible to liberals? Poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue.

Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?

Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent.

P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).

P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.

A. C. Grayling on the Roman Polanski Statutory Rape Case

I find myself in complete agreement with Professor Grayling's commentary on the Polanski case.  Read it carefully; he makes several important points.  What is astonishing to me, however, is how this man can be so sane and judicious on this topic, and yet such a blithering gasbag of a lunatic when it comes to religion, as I document  here.  There is something I call topical insanity, and Grayling on religion is an example of it. Sometimes otherwise sane people simply 'lose it' when it comes to certain topics. 

Vigilantism? The Jerome Ersland Case

When decent citizens fail to receive adequate protection from governmental agencies, and when they have no reasonable expectation that the scum of society will be properly punished for their crimes, they will be tempted to take the law into their own hands.  Liberals need to think about this.  The American Thinker offers commentary on the Jerome Ersland case.

My thought: Ersland was fully justified in shooting the ski-masked punk who was attempting armed robbery.  But after he had felled the thug, and he was lying unconscious on the floor, Ersland was not justified morally in 'finishing him off.'  But that is very easy for me to say, sitting here in comfort and safety in my philosopher's retreat, having no need to face an increasingingly violent public as a pharmacy worker or convenience store attendant.  If  had been in Ersland's position I would have been tempted to do what he did.  Why let a malefactor live who will most likely come gunning for you later?  Why let the worthless piece of human detritus live to commit further crimes, especially when the likelihood of his being properly segregated from the rest of us is low?  Why not send a signal to the criminal element that there is no percentage in armed robbery?  And for that matter, why not send a signal to the contemptible liberals who will excuse and defend any miscreant while showing no concern for the decent citizens who pay the bills?

Hocking on the Anarchist and the Criminal

William Ernest Hocking explains the anarchist’s attitude toward the criminal as follows:

As for the criminal, his existence is not forgotten; but it is thought that he is either such by definition only, as one who has disobeyed what we have commanded; or he is such by response to the unnatural environment of the state and the inequalities which it fosters; or else he is the unusual individual of determined ill-will who is best dealt with by near and private hands, since the life of the will, whether for good or for evil, is always intimate, individual, and unique. ("The Philosophical Anarchist," in Hoffman ed., Anarchism, Lieber-Atherton, 1973, pp. 116-117)

Suppose we consider Hocking's three points seriatim.