Is there anything worse than a “smart” conservative shill?
From Paul Ryan and his stupid little charts to scummy right-wing think tank trolls—they burrow into prestige, liberal platforms by throwing around data and bad faith arguments. So whereas the Atlantic or Matt Yglesias wouldn’t give, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene voice in their vaunted centrist-liberal spaces, they’ll gladly platform the likes of the Manhattan Institute’s Charles Fain Lehman.
In. guest post on Yglesias’s Slow Boring, Lehman writes: “The criminal justice system doesn’t do enough to make us safe Here’s a plan to update it..” Lehman uses 2,000 words to diagnose America’s violent crime problem (only one of those words is “guns”) and offer a solution: drastically expand the criminal system.
There are lots of popular explanations for this disparity. As Matt has observed, some of it is attributable to the large number of guns we own. Some of it may be cultural or sub-cultural — the persistence of southern honor culture explains part of why that region has a higher homicide rate, e.g.
In a recent Atlantic article, Reihan Salam and I suggested a different perspective: identifying the “root causes” of our comparatively high rates of violence is less important than adequately applying the tools of policy to the problem of controlling violence. The level of violence should be understood primarily as a function of the extent to which state capacity is exerted to stop it. Violence, that is, is a policy choice.
Yes, “some” might say that we have higher rates of violent crime than other wealthy nations because of guns. And “some” might further say that gun control might be a reasonable policy choice. That’s so basic though. That’s what an old lady or a naive college student would put on a protest sign.
Some of it may be cultural or sub-cultural — the persistence of southern honor culture explains part of why that region has a higher homicide rate, e.g.
Lol the what? Cletus took his sword to ole man Franklin’s farm to defend his sister’s honor? (or could it be that in general the South has laxer gun laws than California?)
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