Gary Horton’s Aug. 5 rant of the week, “It’s Time to Reimagine Law and Order,” certainly touched all the bases we’ve come to expect from the radical left recently as they relate to “fixing” our allegedly broken law enforcement system.
Throughout his column Horton repeatedly refers to America’s “incarceration rate” as the rationalization for his position: “Today, America incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation. At 700 inmates per 100,000 residents, we top arch-bad guys Cuba by 30%, Russia by 200%, China by 540%, and repressive Iran by 230%.”
He apparently thinks such communist “paradises” as Cuba et al are going to accurately report imprisonment rates that reflect badly on their utopias. Not to mention that they have euphemistically designated “re-education” camps that aren’t counted as prisons, and in which people aren’t “incarcerated,” they’re “cured.” Also not to mention that in those countries boatloads of people simply… disappear.
When I posted that observation as an online comment, Horton replied: “Look at the company we’re not only keeping, but exceeding… When you compare the U.S. to other modern industrial democratic nations, the difference is beyond stark. Canada, Germany, England, Australia…. we are multiples and multiples higher in incarceration. They are not countries gone wild, Brian. They are nice places to live. So — please explain WHY we have this odd outlier outcome — and how can we fix it? How would you fix it?”
But as I responded there, I’m not going to “explain” anything because I reject the entire notion that incarceration rates are meaningful in any way as they pertain to this country. Some people commit criminal acts. If they get caught and convicted in a public trial they get locked up (except maybe in Commiefornia). It’s as simple as that.
If we were talking about some police state in which people get locked up for “thought crimes” or political activities, he might then have a case. But that’s not the case here. We’re unique in the world in that we have rights and freedoms that are constitutionally guaranteed. As far as I’m concerned we’re the gold standard. So I don’t care what other countries are doing. They have nothing for us to emulate; they should be trying to emulate us. I’ve been to every one of those countries he mentioned in his comment, and well over a dozen more, and there’s not a single one of them in which I’d prefer to live rather than here.
Are we perfect? Of course not; nothing created by humans is. But the idea that this country is, or is becoming, some kind of police state is simply absurd.
Horton is spouting the same rhetorical nonsense we’re getting from the radicals who are creating such havoc across the country, but he’s dressing it up in better language.
It’s a sorry attempt to slather lipstick on a pig.
Brian Baker
Castle Rock, Colorado
