Dads Or Jails: You Choose

In my previous post, wherein I unjustly slurred noble sand, I shared this quote from Bill Barr.

(T)here are only two ways to restrain people from following disordered passions, Barr said: internal restraints, which are largely provided by one’s beliefs; and external restraints, which are typically provided by government. So in order to have a limited government, Barr noted in an explicit echo of the American Founders, citizens must practice self-restraint.

In my original Lizard Empire post, I said this.

One of the reasons the Romans liked a big empire was that it pushed the borders, where lived dangerous barbarians, far, far away from them. The larger the Empire, the safer you were, no matter where you were. I'd like to suggest that Jeffrey Epstein, children in drag and trannies in the library are all part of the modern-day American cultural Empire. That is, acceptance of their behavior expands the empire by normalizing ever more degeneracy.

Remember, your behavior might be degenerate under some definition, but the farther out the borders go, the less degenerate you look.

I believe that the primary constraint on our dominant social institutions is that none of them can proscribe any sexual activity at all. Further, none of them will rank them on a scale of desirable to undesirable. It is utterly forbidden to suggest that, all other things being equal, traditional marriage is superior to all other forms of relationships.

With that in mind, dig how NBC is dealing with a massive spike in crime in New Orleans following the election of same type of lenient government officials as we have in Atlanta, San Francisco, LA, Chicago and elsewhere.

Title: New Orleans battled mass incarceration. Then came the backlash over violent crime.

Right from the top, NBC is making a hash of the story. The police in NOLA weren't going into the 9th Ward and rounding up people en masse. There were arrests and trials and witnesses and juries and stuff like that.

After NOLA did away with law enforcement, there's been a huge spike in crimes. Fatima Muse lost her godmother, Portia Pollock, to a stabbing and robbery. Fatima has gone from a social justice activist to a believer in law and order.

“This conversation we’re having right now would probably be a lot different if it wasn’t the person that I love who got killed,” Muse said. “I would probably be a lot more lenient and liberal, talking to you about reform, people deserving another shot, and how screwed up the system is, especially for Black and brown people.”

A false choice is then set up by the author.

(Denise) Graves, a pastor and community organizer, said she and Pollock dreamed of one day buying an RV to drive around the country doing healing work and teaching African cultural workshops. Now, Graves, 69, is left working to heal herself, and that work has been slow. “I think there’s a part of you that breaks. There’s a part that you think cannot be repaired,” Graves said. 

Like Muse, Graves is no one’s idea of a “tough-on-crime” ideologue. She calls prisons an “expansion of enslavement” and says the criminal legal system is “criminal” itself. But she also has strong feelings about the value of consequences. 

“If we keep telling people you can carjack, and you’ll get off, you can carjack, you’ll get off — murder is going to happen,” Graves said. 

Apparently, we have only two possible approaches.

1. Round up people at random and throw them in jail or
2. Let them run wild, killing and robbing. 

Both of these selections assume that there is only one lever to push - the external restraint one. That's because the internal restraint one would require a return to traditional families and the attendant discipline of having a married father in the house. 

The lizards don't like that, so here we are.

To test my theory, I went into my backyard and asked the first lizard I saw what he thought of it. Horrified, he ran away, proving conclusively that lizards don't want to hear about traditional marriage. It's also why you don't see a lizard in this photo.

Obligatory Ranting About The Catholic Church

The Church, of course, has the answer that doesn't involve mass incarceration of the real or the fantasy variety. That same answer doesn't lead to Portia getting stabbed by a black man who was out on bail and trying to steal her car. It even comes from the pen of one of our recent popes, someone who apparently has fallen out of favor, JPII.

If we Catholics evangelized JPII's solution, we'd embrace love and kindness and better solutions for all. However, we'd have to throw out our racial justice stuff. Since the real goal of most of our bishops and practically all of our universities is to get people to vote for Democrats, we have no intention at all of insisting that marriage, family and personal discipline are the answers.

Bonus Note

The next time the bishop here in San Diego puts out a call for donations to the Diocese, I'm going to skip sending cash and instead, I'll vow to vote for Democrats. It's what he really wants, anyway. I'll bet that when the end of the fund raising drive comes and the bishop is opening all the envelopes, he feels one disappointment after another.

"Let's see what's in this one! Hmm. It's just money. Oh well. I'll just have to put a good face on it. It's the thought that counts."