While driving through Shoshona on The Great North By Northwest Jobs Tour, Clancy and I got pulled over for speeding. We had just stopped to refill the gas tank and I had handed the keys over to her. I hadn’t conveyed to her the rather low speed limit in town and so there were were on the side of the road with flashing lights.

Further complicating matters was that we had a taillight out. Though we didn’t know that to be the case, it wasn’t a surprise. I’d had that light replaced the week before and the guy that replaced it said that it was going to happen again because a leak was allowing water inside. If I’d had the receipt, I would have been able to show the cop that we’d just had it replaced and so we were quite surprised that it went out again (no mention of the leak, of course).

Oh, and we had no proof of insurance.

The cop told us to watch our speed and gave us a warning for the taillight and the speeding. He did give us a ticket for the insurance, but also told us that if we could just prove that we were insured it would be dismissed. He told us that we looked like good, upstanding folks, so he was going to cut us a break. We thanked him profusely.

Later on the trip we were in a bookstore on the Shoshona/Cascadia border that the punner in me wishes was called Borders but alas was their main competitor. We were waiting to hear back on whether or not we would be driving directly back to Gemini Falls or going home. So we decided to hang out at the bookstore. Clancy brought in a book she’d been reading. She asked Customer Service if she needed some sort of tag for her book since she brought it in, but declined and the lady at the checkout didn’t feel the need to check up on that because, well, we looked like good people.

As a smoker and serial-loiterer, I sometimes get run off by local establishments. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. It tends to happen most when two factors are in play, one of which is that I am not dressed nicely. It got to the point that if I knew I would be smoking a cigarette at a convenience store I would actually dress up for the occasion. Half Sigma, I think it was, wrote a short post a while back about a criminal-type who managed to avoid suspicion primarily by dressing in a suit.

I am a relatively fortunate guy. I was born white into a house with solid middle class values. I was taught (though it didn’t always take) how to dress up or down for an occasion. I was taught to be polite to cops and polite to people in general. That appearances matter. Though this is belied a bit by my loitering, nonetheless I was taught that it is best not to look or act the least bit suspicious. While it is everyone’s right to act suspicious, just because something is a right does not make it a good idea and people can make trouble for you if they feel its worth their own trouble.

It’s enough to make one wonder the extent to which this is a healthy outlook for a society. I’m sure an indignant, younger version of myself would have felt that it was not. Stereotyping is bad and all that. Just because a kid is dressed like somebody that makes trouble does not mean that he should be treated that way.

The older I get, the less convincing I find that perspective. Even if you are doing nothing wrong, you are providing a degree of cover for those that are doing wrong. If criminals all start wearing plaid tomorrow, it would make the job of police officers a lot easier! Making their job easier not only results in less crime, but it also involves them spending less time bothering good, upstanding folks trying to suss out the criminals.

I’m not advocating laws being passed to ban plaid or anything like that. Nor do I think that being deferential to a police officer should be one of those things forced with the strong arm of the law (except as required). And I don’t think that wearing plaid should, in and of itself, be probable cause for anything. The same goes for mouthing off to a cop (within reasonable limits, of course).

There is a saying that just because something is a right does not make it right. The next step is to say that just because something is a right does not make it morally neutral, either. It may not be illegal for a man with an unpleasant build to wear a speedo to the beach, but that doesn’t mean that doing something he knows will make others uncomfortable is not self-centered and distasteful.

On the subject of deferring to law enforcement personnel, it would of course be much easier to do that if you can trust them. There are parts of Delosa and Louisiana and other southern states where I would never, ever let a cop look in my car without a warrant. There are other circumstances with any police department where I would be a lot more reluctant. Often, police departments bring this sort of resistance upon themselves.

This is one of those areas where I think a good amount of disservice is done with traffic enforcement. Speed traps are a great way to raise funds, but they’re also a good way to create mistrust between the police and the citizenry. It makes more of our encounters with cops than not an adversarial experience. Cities, counties, and states have rights about what kind of speed limits to post. They also have the right to shorten yellow lights at intersections. And the right to park bait cars. But just like the actions of the citizens have inconvenient ramifications sometimes, so do actions of the authorities.

-{Take care to note that other than in the rhyming title, no mention of race is mentioned here.}-

My head hurts from the first two and my gut hurts from laughing at the last one.

When I was younger, Mom was complaining about some new onerous inconvenience they were putting on non-smokers and how eventually they were just going to ban it altogether. I didn’t believe her at the time and to some extent I still don’t. But my skepticism was outsized and she was more right than I knew. The torrent of anti-smoking legislation in the past decade has made me wonder where, precisely, this is all leading. Will Saletan has done a fantastic job of chronicling how much more confident the anti-smoking forces have become in terms of citing smaller and smaller inconveniences as unacceptable and how much ground smokers have lost in trying to convince people that their right to partake in their vices, at some point in the conversation, should be taken into consideration.

With each battle they’ve lost, the other side has gained confidence. After each battle, the non-smoking majority realizes how much more pleasant things are when they aren’t forced to endure second-hand smoke. And smokers themselves often realize the virtues of these regs that allow them to go places with non-smokers that they couldn’t go before. The smoking ban on restaurants and bars has been an incredible success. My friend Web excepted, I don’t know anyone that supported the ban regretting having done so and I know a lot of people (including myself) who opposed it have reconsidered. Add to this a lot of people with the resources and discipline to quit have done so, culling a portion of the most capable and privileged and plugged in from the ranks of the smokers. As smoking becomes considered to be the province of the poor, lazy, hedonistic, and disgusting, the sentiment to push it further and further away from non-smokers becomes less and less objectionable to a majority of the population. Perhaps eventually to the point of vindicating Mom and banning it altogether. Or maybe not.

As Saletan points out, we’re starting to cross a threshold where any inconvenience at all to the non-smoker is sufficient grounds to legislate against the “right to smoke” in some place or under some circumstance. You have non-smoking sections, but smoke drifts. You have no smoking in indoor restaurants, but if non-smokers want to eat on the patio they still have to breathe the air. You push smokers away from the door and they’re still on the sidewalk. You push them away from the sidewalk, and they’re supposed to go… where? Their cars? You can smell cigarette smoke from neighboring vehicles and of course people toss their butts out the window and pollute. Their house? Well, if they smoke indoors they are a hazard to their children and if they smoke outdoors people next door can smell it. It really won’t be long before neighborhoods start associating smoking with lower property values and prevent you from smoking outdoors at all. And anybody smoking anywhere has the potential of increasing health care costs.

We’re further along in all of this than you might think. I absolutely can’t smoke in our rented house. I’m not supposed to smoke on the premises. Sidewalks and parks are not yet prohibited in Cascadia, but it’s happening in more and more places. Convenience stores where you buy the cigarettes don’t appreciate loiters (though if you’re white and/or wearing work clothes, they probably won’t say anything. If you own your own home and don’t have children

When the threshold is that no inconvenience or hardship to non-smokers is acceptable at all, then smoking has to be prohibited outright. The further along we get on this path, the more respect I have for people that just come out and say that. Instead, it sort of becomes this disingenuous conversation that is always prefaced about “While freedom is important…” and ends with “… if somebody else’s freedom is adversely affecting others, it’s taking away their freedom.” While for some anti-smoking arguments it makes a degree of sense, if you applied the more recent arguments to food peanuts and peanut oil would be contraband.

I think that the issue here is that American’s have a great appetite for nanny-statism, but they don’t like that they do. So they end up framing it in some way that they can say that it’s not about telling other people what to do. For many this probably is the case, but for those that speak the loudest in the anti-smoking movement, it often isn’t. And at the rate we’re moving, we’re reaching the point where cigarettes will be legal to buy but not legal to smoke for anyone that isn’t a childless homeowner on their own private lot (or knows somebody of the same).

And maybe the would be okay. Frankly, the anti-statism argument against smoking has lost a lot of resonance with me. Smoking simply isn’t like other bad habits in that it literally flies (okay, drifts) right in the face of those that find it unpleasant or are actively harmed by it. It is a lifestyle choice that most who make it want to unmake it. And it is a choice that, when made, is extraordinarily difficult to unmake. Its contribution to culture and society is negligible. Unlike alcohol and unhealthy foods, it is abused by almost everyone that partakes. When used as directed, cigarettes kill. And on and on. You would be surprised how many people I knew on the smokers’ deck at Monmark-Soyokaze who would agree with the proposition that the stuff should be banned. And if I thought our government could pull it off, I’d say the same.

The problem with banning cigarettes is quite simply that we can’t. If we could just get them out of convenience stores we would be making extraordinary progress, but we can’t even do that. We can’t ban cigarettes because people are just not quite comfortable with their nanny-state instincts to sign on. And with both cigarettes and convenience store sales of the same, you have some pretty powerful lobbies against it. And I suppose that some of the disingenuous behavior of the anti-smokers is on the basis that it’s pointless to lobby for the impossible whine you can chip away at it piece by possible piece.

The problem with the Externality-Reduction Approach (a good a name as any), though, is that if you’re fighting it on all battles all the time and you miss out on compromises that could benefit both smokers and non-smokers in living amicably. Even if you have no respect for what the smokers are doing to their own bodies, having respect for smokers can help create a compromise that will ultimately benefit non-smokers.

For instance, if you disregard smokers so much so that you give them unrealistic aims and then view their complaints as “their problem”, you encourage people to disregard the rules altogether. For instance, telling people not to smoke within 30 feet of a main entrance to a public building is quite reasonable. Extending this to all entrances, however, can lead to pushing them out into the scorching sun or rain. Even if you feel that smokers, being as evil as they are, deserve to face the elements, what will happen instead is that they will simply ignore the 30ft rule. If enough of them ignore it, it becomes impossible to enforce it. And if they’re going to break the rule, they might as well smoke five feet from the door.

Alternately, if you require employers that allow smoking on the premises to set up a covered smoking area 30 feet away from any entrance, smokers would be happy to abide by that. My ex-boss Calvin (who belonged to a religion that abhored smoking) set up a little canopy outside the workshop and in my year-and-a-half there, I never saw anybody smoke near any door. Even when the canopy was leaking! You may think to yourself that smokers do not deserve such accommodations, but it was the non-smokers that ultimately benefited.

The ban on smoking in restaurants and bars has proven to be popular, but there may have been a better way of going about it. Until they successfully ban smoking on sidewalks or in commercial districts, one thing the smoking ban has done is push smokers outside the restaurant and onto the sidewalk. Before people could avoid cigarette smoke by not going into establishments that allowed smoking. Now they can’t at all because they have to pass by lines of smokers outside the front door (where, even if there is a 30ft rule, it is ignored because there is no obvious place for them to go). A better approach may have been licensing and regulation. Limit the number of establishments that can allow smoking inside, regulate their HVAC, and disallow it elsewhere. Smokers will gravitate toward and inside establishments that allow smoking and will be off the streets. In the current environment, if smokers have the option of being out of the way, they would love to be so.

In part because smokers fought even reasonable accommodations for non-smokers, there are reasons that non-smokers and anti-smokers view smokers as the enemy. But I think that the tide has turned to such a degree that the animosity is going to cause more harm than good. People who are allowed to buy cigarettes but are not allowed to actually smoke them anywhere will smoke them somewhere. And the more the rules are tilted against smokers, the less they will abide by them. And it doesn’t stop them from being the statists that they swear they are not.

Colosse has had an unusual dearth of homicides lately. It went a full twelve days between homicides. Reporters are scratching their heads seeing if they can see if a record has been broken. Then, of course, a murder happened.

It makes me think of those chalkboards with “There have not been any accidents in __ Days.” Somewhere, I can imagine a secretary or an officer erasing the 12 off a chalk board and replacing it with a 0.

An interesting case before the Supreme Court this time around offers an interesting question: when does the “Miranda Rights” warning expire?

Miranda, of course, is the famous case that gave us the famous warning-to-all-people-being-arrested that begins “You have the right to remain silent…” The followup case, Edwards V. Arizona, established that anything said after you say “I want a lawyer” can’t be admitted to court unless it is proved that your lawyer was right next to you, in the room, during any subsequent police interrogation.

This time around, we get Maryland V. Shatzer. The bare-bones are: a suspect was in jail. A police detective came to interview him, read him his rights, the suspect said “I want my lawyer”, and the detective simply closed up the case rather than spend the time getting the lawyer present. Two years and 7 months later, a different police detective turns up, reopens the case, goes to the prison, interviews the suspect, reads him his rights again, and begins “interrogating” the guy without a lawyer present, eventually getting him to waive his right to counsel and getting an admission of another crime out of him.

The case is interesting on two points. The first point is how long a “Miranda warning” lasts, the second is possible ways police could try to get around it. Under the initial Edwards test, from the moment a suspect invokes the right to counsel, and as long as they are “in custody”, the police may not speak with them (at least to get admissible evidence) without a lawyer present, and requires a “re-reading” of rights if they “break custody” and then bring them back for another interview. So (for example), the police can’t read you your rights and then hold you in custody for a week after you ask for a lawyer, constantly bringing you back for an “interview” every hour or two and badgering you to waive your previous exercise of your right to counsel. They can, however, read you your rights, say “we’re done, you can go home” when you ask for a lawyer, send you home, and then call you back in (say, a week or a month later) for another “interview” and ask you to waive your right to counsel again as long as they have broken the “chain of custody” in the meantime. They also can get your lawyer in the room, yell, scream, lie, and otherwise badger you (with your lawyer likely constantly telling you “don’t answer that”), and pretty much do whatever they want hoping to provoke a reaction and a statement that they could use, with your lawyer then being “under the gun” to convince a judge to throw any statement you made in his presence out on the grounds of coercion.

The police in Maryland are claiming that the original canceled interview, and the new one, constitute this break in “custody.” The problem for them (at least for a lawyering perspective) is that this guy was sitting in prison the whole time, “in the custody” of the state. Yes, he might not have been in the lockup of that one specific precinct, but as far as his lawyers are concerned, he was in jail – movement restricted, access to even his own lawyer restricted, etc. From their perspective, the second police detective had no right to show up (even a couple years later) and conduct a second interview without the guy’s lawyer present.

As a thought experiment, it’s supremely interesting. The question of “chain of custody” between police jail, and county/state lockup, is odd – saying the police had “broken custody” on those grounds could lead to police simply transferring suspects over to a neighboring county lockup, then badgering them there, in order to get around an exercise of right-to-counsel. The question of police trying to reopen an old case – and launching a new “interview”, with a new reading of rights, while not paying attention to previous directives from the suspect – is dodgy at best. The underlying real “nasty tactic” which seems to be legal, would be the police letting someone go home and then showing up the next morning to arrest and “interview” them each day until they finally gave up their right to counsel, though it seems any competent lawyer at trial ought to be able to quickly get that tossed out on grounds of coercion, harassment, and abuse of police powers.

Fairly warned, the case is unlikely to have any aid in its defendant; indeed, one of the tenets of legal thought (“easy cases make bad law”, with its necessary corrolary “hard cases also make bad law”) comes to mind. The problem? The guy is serving time for “sexual abuse of a child”, according to the court docket, and the subsequent interview and the crime he supposedly admitted to (with the level of officer-badgering unknown and no lawyer present) is sexual abuse of another child, and the reopening of the case was prompted by his wife (or possibly ex-wife, court documents sometimes being vague and referring to things as they were “at the time of offence” rather than current situation). This makes him, as defendants go, roughly as unsympathetic as can be. The Supreme Court is theoretically pretty good about setting aside the idea of the unsympathetic defendant (especially given that they only see the lawyers for each side) but it’s a crime that tends to raise emotions regardless.

• Roman Polanski has managed to do the impossible. He has united feminist liberals, law & order conservatives, the American public, and even the French public. I haven’t seen this sort of consensus since 9/11.
• When this all started, the picture (at least presented by the media) was a little bit different. It was presented as France/Europe vs. America, controversial, and a subject in which reasonable people disagreed vociferously. The Washington Post’s editorialists split in three different directions:
  • Obama-voting, right-leaning Anne Applebaum was outraged. She also declined to disclose that her husband is a Polish official seeking to set Polanski free.
  • Liberalish Richard Cohen wasn’t outraged but felt that Polanski should be set free.
  • Liberal Eugene Robinson was exasperated that anyone could defend him.
• I find it fascinating (and a little depressing) how quickly the lines formed on this and the assumptions involved:
  • For people that recoil at American sexual puritanism, they immediately jumped to a number of conclusions, many of which demonstrably false (more on that later), that fit their narrative that this is a case of American exceptionalism in the face of a more enlightened foreign consensus.
  • Critics of Europe’s more liberal attitudes towards sex and of France in general immediately jumped to the conclusion that the French officials were speaking for the French people
  • Conservatives immediately accused “liberals” of defending Polanski, though few actually are.
• The fury with which many in Europe leaped to Polanski’s defense was truly bizarre to me. It’s one thing to take Cohen’s squeamish stance at the prospect of arresting a 70-something year old man for something done 30+ years ago wherein even the victim doesn’t want this to drag out. I disagree with that, but I can understand it. It’s another to find the notion outrageous. And apparently in the opening hours, there really was a lot of concern among the French that this was American overreach, if this Bruce Crumley article is accurate.
• Then, of course, things changed. Polls amongst the French showed a 2-to-1 majority believing that the arrest was legit. This leads me to believe one of two sets of things occurred:
  1. The people Bruce Crumley talked to were among the 30%. This is possible because he’s probably more likely to talk to the segment of the population more interested in the notion that the US is a Puritanical state that wants to punish sex. It’s also possible that Crumley himself (not only a heathen journalist, but one who got posted in France!) acribes to this mentality and so he projected his own views onto the French people or otherwise sought out sympathetic tongues.
  2. More likely, though, is that before the facts came rolling in, assumptions were made about the facts of the case. That it happened at a party. That the girl consented. That Polanski didn’t have reason to know how old she was. Also along these lines is the possibility that they were simply lied to by people that pretended to know more about the case than they did or knowingly spread false information.
• I’m inclined to believe the latter explanation because the vast majority of the early pushback against the arrest seemed to be rooted in misinformation and not of the debatable kind. A lot of comments about how everybody agrees it was consensual (which is not true). Comments about how she lied about her age (which nobody is alleging). Comments about how the arrest is illegal due to statutes of limitations (which do not apply). That what he did was only illegal because it was in the puritanical US (very untrue). I see a lot fewer of those comments more recently and more comments on the defenses of Polanski that hold more merit (judicial misconduct, that Polanski is no longer a threat to anyone, and that the victim wants this to all just go away).
• The illegality, and indeed immorality, of what Polanski did should be pretty obvious to everyone. Sex with a 13 year old, consensual or not, is illegal in California and the US and almost all of Europe. It not only runs against American law and European law, it runs afoul of Gannon’s worldview. And that’s not even considering the allegations of coersion. I’m a critic of American AOC laws, but I can’t imagine a regime that I would support that would let a 44 year old male have sex with a 13 year old female. And even to the extent that she did consent and even if she had wanted it because she was starstruck or wanted to further her career, there is almost no scenario in which I can see Polanski taking advantage that in any way that isn’t pretty immoral.
• I’ve seen some try to question the timing of the arrest. It’s all pretty straightforward in my mind: The Zurich Film Festival people stupidly (and helpfully for the authorities!) advertised where he was going to be well in advance. And this time the authorities were able to keep hush-hush enough about it to keep from scaring Polanski away. I’m not even sure what that accusation is supposed to mean in terms of nefariousness. The documentary came out a year ago and as far as I know there’s no new big, giant scandal sweeping the LA DA’s office. It reminds me a little bit of the late 90’s when conservatives attempted to attach each and every foreign policy decision that Clinton made to a Wag the Dog trick. It wasn’t hard because there was always some scandal going on any time Clinton sent our boys (and girls) into action.
• Kudos to Kevin Smith for being an early Hollywood voice against giving Polanski a pass.
• Chris Rock: “People are defending Roman Polanski because he made good movies 30 years ago? Are you kidding me? Even Johnny Cochran didn’t have the nerve to go, ‘Well did you see OJ play against New England?’”
• There seems to be some confusion of the ultimate significance of the alleged wrongdoing by the LA District Attorney’s office and the judge in the case. That’s the issue that most of Polanski’s remaining defenders (outside of Hollywood) are hanging their hat on. It seems to me that there are three ways this could go:
  1. The complaint is thrown out, the plea upheld but not the deal, and the new judge gets discretion over what the sentence should be. This is what a lot of Polanski-bashers are hoping for (and seem a little too optimistic about). This would certainly be a worst-case scenario for Polanski.
  2. The new judge determines that the old judge screwed up, but that the plea and the original deal both stand. This would mean that Polanski gets Time Served and does no more time for the statutory rape offense. However, there would still be the fleeing of the jurisdiction and that could lead to some jail time.
  3. The plea and the deal are both thrown out. Polanski is then free to enter a Not Guilty plea. This is a best-case scenario for Polanski. The victim is uncooperative and the mere threat of forcing her to testify could easily be enough to scare prosecutors out of prosecuting entirely and would certainly make them more amenable to a sweet deal that would have Polanski roaming the streets of LA relatively soon as if he hadn’t done a thing.
• In the event that the guilty plea is thrown out, I would oppose bringing the victim back to California to testify. It’s one thing to ignore the victim’s wishes when nothing is required of her (which would likely be the case if the guilty plea stands), but it’s another to ignore the wishes of the victim and force her to fly to LA and relive the experiences that she has so successfully moved beyond. I want to see Polanski face a penalty for what he’s done, but not at that expense of the victim. I would hope that they could still get Polanski for fleeing the jurisdiction.
• If the underlying charges against someone are dismissed, can he still go to jail for fleeing the country? I’m pretty sure he can. This is sort of a can of worms, I guess. In the case of an innocent man fleeing the jurisdiction and having his innocence proven, I would not favor prosecution for fleeing. If the charges are dropped due to insufficient evidence, though, that’s a dicier proposition. Another factor is if there was official misconduct alleged. In other words, if a guy happens to be at the wrong end of the circumstantial evidence stick and flees, I have less sympathy than the guy that is being actively framed by the authorities. Of course, this is further complicated by the fact that there is official misconduct alleged. This isn’t the kind I had in mind, though. But it’s hard to parse these distinctions without doing so on a case-by-case basis.
• Mostly, though, I want the judge to follow the law. I think that so many people discussing this case are so intent on arguing what the law should be in this case that they’re losing sight of the fact that laws exist beyond this case. If the law says that Polanski should be set free, then he should be set free. If the law says that his skipping town significantly reduces the number of his legal options, then his parents’ death in the Holocaust shouldn’t change that. If he is let go, I will not be outraged, though I will want a good explanation. Then, if the explanation is rooted in “Poor old frail guy doesn’t deserve punishment in light of his dark history and his contributions to the arts”, then I’ll be outraged.
• Some of you are probably aware that Poland, when not fighting vigorously for leniency with Polanski, aims to force chemical castration on pedophiles. For those of you that wonder: Yes, Polanski’s crime would apply as the victim was under 15.
• On a positive note, I’ve been very pleased to see jokes about Polanski and prison rape kept to a minimum. Prison rape is unacceptable and not funny regardless of who the victim is.

Counterpoint, from Slate’s Tom Vanderbilt:

The consequences of not issuing tickets were shown in a recent study of traffic violations in New York City. From 2001 to 2006, the number of fatalities in which speeding was implicated rose 11 percent. During the same period, the number of speeding summons issued by the NYPD dropped 11 percent. Similarly, summonses for red-light-running violations dropped 13 percent between 2006 and 2008, even as the number of crashes increased. As an alternative approach, consider France, where the dangerous driver is as storied a cliché as a beret on the head and a baguette under the arm. As the ITE Journal notes, since 2000, France has reduced its road fatality rate by an incredible 43 percent. Instrumental in that reduction has been a roll-out of automated speed cameras and a toughening of penalties. For example, negligent driving resulting in a death, which often results in little punishment in the United States, carries a penalty of five years in prison and a 75,000-euro fine.

The “folk crime” belief helps thwart increased traffic enforcement: Why should the NYPD, whose resources and manpower are already stretched, bust people for dangerous driving when they could be going after murderers? Well, apart from the fact that more people are killed in traffic fatalities in New York City every year than they are in “stranger homicides,” there is the idea, related to the link between on-and-off-road criminality, that targeting traffic violators might be an effective way to combat other crimes. Which brings us to the third benefit of traffic tickets: increased public safety. Hence the new Department of Justice initiative called DDACTS, or Data Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety, which has found that there is often a geographic link between traffic crashes and crime. By putting “high-visibility enforcement” in hot spots of both crime and traffic crashes, cities like Baltimore have seen reductions in both.

Counterpoint:
Jericho, Arkansas. Even putting aside the violence (and let’s also put aside the demographics of the town, please), you still have a town doing what hundreds of little towns do across the country. Even to the extent that traffic stops do help save lives, there are clearly cases where that is not the primary reason for doing so. Further, the problem with the “Random Use Tax” idea posited above is that (a) the fact that most people won’t get a ticket any given year makes opposition to the tax relatively minimal and (b) it’s a tax primarily levied on outsiders. Further, as Web has pointed out in the past, when cops do start profiteering, invites mistrust between officers and the population they’re theoretically serving. People doing no harm should have nothing to fear from the cops. People doing no harm still feel that moment of terror when they see flashing blue lights come on behind them, even if they’re not breaking the law and the lights are meant for someone else.

Further, the notion of pulling people over for speeding leading to arrests in other crimes… well that’s certainly a benefit. Of course, you could also get the same results with random pull-overs, strict racial profiling, and a lot of other ways. Checkpoints have their uses, too. Of course, there are Constitutional questions if the person hasn’t done anything to warrant a pull-over. The solution to that, I would say, is to make so many rules that it becomes virtuously impossible to follow all the rules. My brother was pulled over once for “changing lanes too quickly”. An acquaintance was pulled over for “driving too close to the curb.” There are cases where you literally cannot change lanes without doing so within 100 feet of an Intersection. And so on, and so on. I’m not saying that these rules don’t have their function, but to the extent that they’re used to check people out for other crimes… I’m just not entirely comfortable with that.

When we were in high school, my best friend Clint wrote a short story about a kid that snaps one day in school and begins creatively slaughtering his classmates. It was called “The Hero” and of course we all loved it. Had it been written in the post-Columbine era, we probably would have been dragged into the office of a psychologist or principal or detective. But when Columbine happened, the instinct of a lot of us was… understanding. We didn’t agree with what they did, but as Chris Rock said of OJ Simpson, we could understand it. Push kids far enough and see what happens! We found a degree of commonality with those ruthless killers. Of course, we find out years later that they were nothing like us. They weren’t misunderstood rejects… they were bullies. Their actions were not a response to their passive existence, but instead were the culmination of their aggressive one.

When I was in college, I had a professor that liked to talk about Mark Richard Hilburn and Larry Jason, two of the infamous cadre of postal workers that inspired the phrase “going postal”. In the Professor’s estimation, postal workers were the perfect example of what Marx was talking about when he discussed the alienation of man from his labor. He described the working environments of postal sorters in such grim detail that there seemed to be a sort of rationality to the response of going insane. In fact, I had the previous week applied for a job at UPS (they had a lot of night-time jobs that were ideal for college students) and immediately decided not to take the job. The Professor went on to say that this is what capitalism is doing to all of us. Leaving aside for a moment that the USPS is not a capitalist enterprise and that capitalism is especially good at automating tedious work of the sort that can drive a person insane, and leaving aside that we didn’t know that Hilburn and Jason were, in fact, sorters, a sense of understanding was required as to what is being done to us and how we are simply responding to the systems at work that we are forced to participate in.

One thing that a lot of people don’t do that they should is to take on the mantle of their ideological opponents and try to articulate counter-arguments to your own perspective. The ability to do so is one of my strengths, so of course I value it. But it’s important to try to take opposing arguments seriously even if you don’t end up buying into them. From a writer’s perspective it’s particularly important. Hollywood’s frequent failure to do so often results in a worse product because their characters take the role of preaching bowling balls knocking down straw pins. So I can very much appreciate Phi taking on the role of a liberal interlocutor on the subject of George Sodini:

Why is it that the Half Sigma / Steve Sailer blogging community, when confronted with, say, the murder of Lily Burke, or the crimes in Knoxville and Wichita and God-knows-where-else, we sound the HBD trumpet and rush to man the barricades? But when George Sodini murders an aerobics class, suddenly we get all root-causey and meta-narrative-social-justicy?

In this case, however, I think that his self-generated foil has a remarkably good point. It was actually something that I had thought about. Before I get started, I want to put the extent to which “root causes” as an explanation for urban crime is legitimate. I’m not arguing that it is or is not, but as longtime readers know I am somewhat allergic to race-based debates in Hit Coffee’s comment section. For the sake of context I will state that my personal take is that searches for “root causes” are of some, but limited, utility. If it can lead to realistic policy or social changes, it may be worth investigating (which, of course, we have been). However, there reaches a point where the countermeasures are so lofty and logistically impossible that it devolves into making excuses for behavior that a society cannot tolerate regardless of its causes.

There is definite value in trying to understand what contributes to substantially anti-social behavior. This is true whether we are talking about high school kids that snap or men that go around killing women. I have great respect for people who make it their career to get into the heads of people whose heads are very unpleasant places. I don’t always think that they’re right, but they go places where right-thinking people should fear to tread. But I am nonetheless quite bothered with the reflexive empathy that people extend towards people they perceive to be like themselves. Sometimes this empathy is a reflection of this person doing what they may secretly dream of in a visceral sort of way (Klebold and Harris to Clint and me, for instance). More frequently, though, it’s simply a matter of seeing more of yourself in the perpetrator than in the victims.

Despite his Internet presence, we don’t really know a whole lot about George Sodini. The big thing we know is that he was dateless and went off and killed some women. Suggestions that he had trouble getting dates because he was the sort of guy that would go off and kill women have largely been shot down. Because he has no severed heads in his refrigerator, we are less to assume that he was normal (if sad and lonely) prior to becoming lethal. People that are predisposed to believe that men are so frequently lonely because women withhold themselves for an ever-decreasing portion of the male population are inclined to give him more benefits of the doubt than not.

So yeah, it’s more than a little suspicious to me that people that are willing to write off 95% of crimes commited, that believe that searches for understand and root causes are a bunch of claptrap, are all of the sudden saying “Hold it there, cowboy, this may be more than a guy that just flew off his rocker. There are cultural aspects to consider here. No one approves of what he did, but it’s important that we take the time and effort to understand why he did it. And the role that women and feminist society played in that.”

But even aside from the murders, there are reasons to believe that he was dysfunctional. Despite appearing to be of above-normal intelligence, his academic career was winding. That he had a job doesn’t demonstrate much as we’re debating his emotional state and not his intelligence. He suddenly stopped drinking many years back (often an indicator for alcohol abuse). His sense of style was off-kilter. He may or may not have a kid. His social venues are ones typically not desired by single men and/or places where there is a presumption of acceptance (church). Even apart from a dearth of romantic options, indications are that he had trouble making friends. He expressed having difficulty emotionally connecting with people.

In a vacuum, it’s mostly harmless stuff. Now all of this could describe a lot of people. Indeed, a lot of it describes me. But, though it pains me to say it, I am a weird guy. So these can all be indications of an eccentric personality or the tip of an iceberg. But they’re not indicative of someone that can expect a whole lot of success with women. Or with friends. I’ve been able to get by in large part by gaining a stronger sense of appropriateness and a more chameleon-like personality than a lot of people with my personality abnormalities can muster. And if I ever did fly off my rocker and kill people, it would have much more to do with my personality than how society dealt with it.

When I was in early high school, to the extent that I was visible I gave out some unfortunate vibes about myself. More than one of Clint’s female friends thought I was a weird stalker sort. They expressed a completely ungrounded fear of me. It stung a little bit, but Clint and I were able to actually have fun with it. We came up with creepy ways that I could act around them to bone up my stalker cred. One day Clint shared this with one of the girls and she was horrified. The fact that I was well-adjusted enough to laugh it off (as opposed to react violently or with great hostility) apparently didn’t mean anything. I was, from the outside looking in to people (of both genders) that didn’t know me well, a weird guy.

Now, I could look at this and look at Sodini and take common cause. Actually, my reaction is something of the opposite. It is my personal similarities to Sodini that make me disinclined to give him much sympathy. Indeed, they’re the things that make me feel more contempt for him more personally than I do, say, Andrea Yates. It’s people like Sodini that give people like me a bad name. Weird people like him are why a lot of women were disinclined to date people like me. Why they feared me. Granted, few men will ever become a Sodini, but the inappropriate behavior can take a hundred different faces. A sense of safety can be understandably stripped by a lot less than physical violence actualized.

I took what I learned from the vibes I was giving out and I learned from them. I learned to behave in ways that were less off-putting. I gained a better sense of the appropriate. I learned how to be socially acceptable. I’ll never really be able to do what I would need to do in order to be a popular and really well liked guy, but I generally know how not to repel. Sodini was either capable of doing this and chose not to, in which case he deserves a degree of revulsion or he lacked the self-awareness or self-acknowledgment to know his role in the problem, which makes him less culpable but beyond what a good-lovin’ woman is likely to be able to fix. In neither case am I likely to look at him as someone that more (or less) deserves to be understood than Lorena Bobbitt, Lisa Nowack, Michael Lee.

-{Ed note: I wrote this post a loooooooooong time ago. Over a year ago, in fact. I know this because when I think I want to spike a post I forward-date it a month or a year. Well, a year later and it was still sitting in my queue and it slipped by me. So anyway, this was mostly a venting session aimed at the failings of democracy. Not sure how interesting you will find it. Click “More” to see the content of the post.}-
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A while back I asked a hypothetical question geared towards determining whether punishment in the pursuit of justice is a good even if it does not deter crime (or indeed, makes it more likely). It’s tempting (and perhaps accurate) to argue that tough sentencing and just punishment acts as an effective deterrent, but would we still support if that weren’t the case? If rewarding crime worked, would it be a policy worth pursuing even if it offends our sense of justice? My hypothetical question was in pretty extreme form where the price for just punishment in terms of recidivism rates was exceptionally steep. So steep that nobody thought it was worth it, though Phi said that he was willing to accept some additional crime for the sake of justice being done.

Econoholic, on the other hand, argued that punishment is a necessary evil and should not be applied at all absent some practical motivation. The need for justice – for society to see that evil is punished – is something that ought to be resisted:

[Trumwill] is asking whether the behavior of punishment is a good in itself. It is not. Punishment is an action taken to achieve a good. A safe society has social value. Punishment has no intrinsic value. It is only valuable inasmuch as it helps us achieve a safe society.

As far as punishment for the sake of punishment, I agree. But after spending a few weeks thinking about it I have come to the conclusion that punishment as it relates to justice, on the other hand, is a good in itself. Even if it has no deterrence value. Even if there are no external negatives: no vigilante injustice, no increase in minor misbehavior resulting from disrespect of the law. Nothing negative beyond the emotional frustration of being watching justice fail to be done.

It is Holic’s position (as best I understand it) that the thirst for punishment/justice was imbued in us primarily for utilitarian reasons and that without the utilitarian aspects of it, it is an inclination that ought to be resisted. So then we’re left with a choice. Either everybody is happy or the just are happy at the expense of the unjust. This assumes, however, that (a) the thirst for justice is something that can be successfully held off or (b) that unhappiness derived from this desire being unmet is illegitimate.

I agree with Holic that the thirst for vengeance ought to be resisted to a degree. I oppose the death penalty on this basis (as well as others) and believe that we should not take delight in, for instance, prison rape even when it comes at the expense of someone convicted of something far worse. The Constitutional blockade on cruel and unusual punishment is another marker of good resistence. Our need for justice must be tempered.

But I don’t believe that it can be wholly disregarded. I don’t believe that the choice is between a happy population that resists a thirst for justice with happy criminals that learn from compassion bestowed upon them (or are otherwise receptive to bribery) or a happy population and unhappy criminals. I don’t believe that everybody can be happy.

So the question is whom we choose to make unhappy. Holic seems to be placing that burden on the vengeful just. They are the ones that need to change their attitudes if it’s the case that their attitudes fail to prevent (or perhaps increase the likelihood) of crime. And maybe there is something to the notion that these people are best equipped to resist their negative impulses. It’s hard to expect criminals to since resisting negative impulses is not exactly their specialty.

To me, however, I see no reason (absent negative results) why we should place a burden on the just and not place a burden on the unjust to simply accept their punishment as having been deserved. If we’re going to be placing the burden of changing attitudes, that burden ought to be placed on those that have done bad things. No, I hold no illusions that criminals are going to actually decide that being imprisoned is a-okay because they had it coming.

But I don’t think that it’s much more likely that you will convince people that coddling criminals and forsaking justice is a-okay, either. People who have had wrong done to them want to know that the person caught will pay a price for it. After all, they paid a price for the criminal behavior because now they have to replace their car stereo. Even if you could convince them that institutional compassion (or bribery) lead to the same or better objective results, it’s too much to ask them to feel good about it.
So with everybody being happy not being possible, all other things being equal make the criminals unhappy.

Of course, that assumes that all other things are equal. In the case of my hypothetical where coddlinng and educating and being super-duper nice to the criminals makes it far less likely that they will commit crimes in the future, I am willing to dispense with justice for the sake of preventing crime. That guy whose stereo was lifted will be upset, but those whose stereos were not lifted when that guy got out won’t be as upset and everybody would enjoy safer streets*.

Even so, I do feel strongly enough about the need for justice that I would accept some measurable increase in crime for the sake of the sense among the public that justice is being done. I am not a particularly vengeful person (anymore), but do think that if I had the choice between having my car broken into 4 times and knowing that each and every time the criminal was caught and punished and having my car being broken in thrice but knowing that if caught the bad guy is going to attend some Positive Mental Attitude classes and be on his way. I don’t know how much crime I would be willing to tolerate for justice, though. It’s not much (it’s not 50%, despite my example), but it’s something.

In addition to a few more crimes being committed, I would also be willing to pay more in tax money for the sake of punishment being landed on the unjust. Of all of the arguments against the death penalty, I consider the weakest to be that it costs more. So what if it does? It could be worth it. It obviously isn’t worth it to me or people who oppose the death penalty anyway, but we all know that even if the death penalty were cheaper than housing criminals for the rest of their lives that it wouldn’t change our perspective. I’ve simply never met anyone whose support of or opposition to the death penalty really, actually came down to dollars and cents.

On the other hand, if it cost a million zillion dollars to execute people or to house them without executing them, that might get people’s attention. I’m not sure how much tax money I would be willing to spend just as I am not sure how much more crime I would be willing to tolerate.

These are all very hypothetical questions. All other things are never equal. But I think that these hypothetical questions are important because they prevent people from coming up with alternate ways to justify their personal preference. Non-hypotheticals often get bogged down in details and speculation as to what other things would happen with everybody believing most of the bad things that could happen if their preference denied and disbelieving the bad things that would happen if they were implemented. Then, before you know it, everybody is citing the statistics that prove that their moral and philosophical preferences are also the most practical.

So the good thing about hypothetical questions is that they clear through all that. It helps us know why we really believe what we do believe. It’s useful to know, for instance, that even if I could be assured that an innocent man has been and could not be executed that I would still oppose the death penalty. Similarly, it’s useful to know that even if a utilitarian case can’t be made for punishment that I would still support it at some level.

* – This is assuming that there is no substantial increase in first-time offenses and that the lower recidivism rates do actually result in less crime in the long run. Web maintains that recidivism is a poor measure for such things. Maybe it is. That’s not the point of this discussion, though.