Counting on Solutions

In response to Seth Abramson's post on March 22. Check out his blog at http://sethabramson.blogspot.com/ I very much admire Seth for his expressive capabilities. He's as much an artist as a lawyer, but I often think his brand of politics may be facing extinction.
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Time and again, we find that numbers lie. They therefore neither adequately support nor undermine an argument in favor of one policy or another. And while mandatory sentencing is generally odious to me since it undermines the power of the judicial system, we must acknowledge on some level that we sometimes have to make decisions that aren't ideal, but at least approach our objectives. In this case, we find ourselves with a need to provide better protection for the population at large, and especially for those who are unable to defend themselves, by which, in this case, I mean children. We haven't done a good job. I can think of Jessica, Danielle, Samantha, and several others just in the past few years that have died horrible deaths at the hands of sex offenders who had a history. And truth be told, I'm much less inclined to care about the offenders, whatever their crime, than about their next victims. This is not to say they are completely undeserving of consideration, but instead that we can't practically institute a system that gives everyone an entirely fair shake - sex offenders, tax payers, kids etc. - without consequences. I'm happy to pay a little more and to punish more severely a few people than is necessary if it means better protection for even one or two children.

We find, unfortunately, that we are sometimes required to make sacrifices in order to meet our aims. One can't get around the sad fact that having your cake and eating it too is simply an impossibility.

And by way of extension, one of the biggest reasons for the unfortunate national lean to the right of late is that there is a type of overcorrection - a backlash - against the liberal MO wherein problems are defined less in pragmatic terms and more in theoretical or philosophical terms. We more liberally minded sorts have simply been too concerned with knocking down practical solutions to real problems because they aren't perfect, and not concerned enough with finding and implementing workable solutions.