Crime, Terrorism, Morals, and the Heresy of the Left

Earlier we mentioned Sheriff Clarke's disappointing endorsement of the concept that 'gun crime is a public-health problem.'

The position is, of course, inane. Clarke is a good guy in general terms, but he swallowed some mighty potent brain-fart material before he spoke on this issue. He was also influenced by some distinctly Leftist reductionism--popular with the Clintons and the intellectualoids of the Left, such as Steve Hargarten, MD. (There are a lot of others, by the way.)

There's a precedent to this, found in the Bill Clinton/Janet Reno approach to terrorism.

The Left, generally, tries to ignore or grossly reduce the moral content of decisions. One can only speculate on the reasons for this; perhaps it's because the Left simply does not wish to recognize morality in general. Perhaps it's because they prefer to think (as did the early heretics, the Manicheans) that men's otherwise-pristine souls are trapped within their evil-inclined eartly bodies. Perhaps it's because of their aversion to Natural Law. It certainly constitutes a denial of the Fall. Whatever the cause, it leads to 'solutions' which are not remedies.

This reductionism is what led X42 to treat terrorism as a 'criminal offense,' rather than as an act of war (albeit an act of a non-State entity.) It's why Clinton refused to pull the trigger when Osama was literally in the sights of a drone over Afghanistan. In other words, instead of treating OBL as what he was (an active enemy of the State,) he wished to reduce him to a 'criminal,' punishable under some portion of the US Code.

Strikes you as fatuous, no?

The smaller-scale application is what we saw this morning (again, earlier proposed by the Clinton Administration): that gun-violence is a 'medical' pathology, not a moral one. In other words, the remedy for random acts of gun-violence and the consequent death-toll and medical costs is some sort of medical protocol instead of criminal charges, trial, conviction, and incarceration.

Same fatuity, different face.

This same theological misunderstanding applies in reverse: where the moral imperative is to treat all men as you would like to be treated, the Left proposes EEOC, No-Smoking Cities, and Handicapped Parking spaces. Where the moral imperative is to respect the persons of others, the Left proposes "sexual harassment" and no-fault divorce. Where the moral imperative is 'good stewardship' of the Earth, the Left proposes Kyoto, the EPA, and DNR.

As GKC so aptly observed, "When you break the Big Laws, all you get is a lot of Little Laws."

GKC was never wrong.