Complacency about crime typically expresses itself in the same phrases, year after year. Perhaps the most shopworn is the phrase, "root causes,"as in, "You Neanderthals should quit being so heartless and try to understand the root causes of crime." It inevitably turns out that the "root causes" have nothing to do with greed, selfishness or lack of morals. Instead, they're always about something for which the hoodlum du jour is not responsible, such as poor education, bad parenting or unemployment.
The "root causes" theory of thuggish behavior just hit the jackpot. The inimitable Ms. Marie Harf of the State Department had this to say about the world's most notorious and mind-bending criminals, ISIS terrorists:
MARIE HARF, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: I think there are a few stages here, right now we are trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the battlefield in Iraq & Syria, that is where they really flourish.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Are we killing enough of them?MARIE HARF: We're killing a lot of them. And we're going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians and Jordanians, they're in this fight with us. We can not win this war by killing them. We can not kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs...
It would be wrong, even perverse, to blame the criminal defense bar for this stultifying nonsense. That said, however, what struck me right off when I read it was its eerie similarity to the allocution I heard again and again from defense counsel: "Your Honor, we can't do any good by imprisoning my client. We cannot incarcerate our way out of drug abuse. We need in the medium and longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these gangs, whether it is lack of opportunity for jobs..."
Moral of story: Once personal responsibility for your behavior goes out the window, there's no telling where it will stop.
For an interviewee to be so loony lefty that even Chris Matthews is flabbergasted is no small accomplishment. Frankly, I didn't think it could be done, but now it has been.