Comment on the Belmont Club: "The Evil that Men Do"

they would never do in later life when they had matured and appreciated

His Lordship confuses a human being with a bottle of wine. One day soon, within the next twenty years, we will begin to really understand how the brain works at a deep level. It will become possible to actually change people, to remove bad thoughts and inject good ones. On that day the compassionate dream will be realized. We will cease to be humans made in the image of God. We will become as livestock or maybe a decent skinful of plonk.

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The policy of the Guardian is not advanced to protect the privacy of a child. It is held to merely to protect the private interests of Grauniad.

There is the concept of "Invincible Ignorance" proposed by Catholics. The Guardian has a policy of Willful Ignorance. We have gone, and as a caveat it is not my religion, from "The truth shall make you free" to "Ignorance is Strength." What both rankles and allows for a saving reaction of ridicule to the efforts of the Guardian is their blatant hypocrisy. These are the same people on the Left who would not hesitate to violate any security regulation or breach any shield of domesticity or privacy to attack their political opponents. They are concerned for the killer of a child who is now an adult but they defend Andrew Sullivan who shamelessly persecutes the child of Sarah Palin or the New York Times that sought out classified information in order to impede George Bush's ability to identify those who do throw acid in the faces of school children.

The ability to respond with contempt to their double standards is a good thing because it gives us space to preserve our individuality. If the totalitarians were consistent and efficient then there would be little hope. They want to convince us of their invincibility and coerce us into submission to their gray assault on reality. Every time that we point out their pretensions we advance the cause of liberty.

On "The Rumor of War" thread RWE's comment #105 relates to a policy of deliberate ignorance and how it effects our security.

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KareninPA,
Concur. We are at risk of mixing issues when we discuss a case this hard.
There is the issue of child versus adult responsibility.
There is the issue of rehabilitation versus recidivism.
There is the issue of therapy versus totalitarian control.

We do not destroy a child even when we need to protect ourselves from it. Some do not believe in punishing a child. My belief is that the punishment must be appropriate in that it must be more temporally focused. That may in fact be true for adults also. It is possible that a brief period of physical punishment, spanking or even "torture" that leaves no permanent damage, may be more effective than a long period of incarceration.

Some conditions can not be cured with current therapies. That includes a propensity to hurt or sexually abuse children. How young that defect manifests itself is beyond my knowledge. Once someone is identified as having that defect, perhaps one day we will discover a genetic or certain physical marker, that person should be permanently isolated or destroyed. They are like Typhoid Mary, incapable of being trusted in society. In this case we do not know if that applies. It is possible that James Venables has merely run afoul of some law or regulation that caused his parole to be lifted without being suspected of a crime of violence. Maybe he developed a drug problem, that may be linked to a deeper defect. It would not in itself be grounds to wish he had been destroyed 17 years ago. Perhaps he has violated one of the million rules and regulations of the Nanny State that can entrap anyone. We do not know.

Finally there is the question of what will we do when science develops the tools to actually go into a brain and change people? One day the Obamas and Pelosis and Rahm Emanuels of the world be be able to turn to someone with the ethics of Ezekial Emanuel and say "Make our problems go away." Imagine when the character of O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four can cure your sickness without that trip to room 101.

Completely off topic I had an MRI recently at the VA to see if my hand weakness or stiffness and passing vision issues that had prevented me from successfully completing the firearms qualification at FLETC, resulting in my current destitution, might have been due to head trauma sustained during training. Everything came back negative, which is good in that it means that I am unlikely to drop from an undetected embolism anytime soon but it is bad in that it means that I have less chance of advancing a claim on the government. For $5.15 I got a copy of the images sent to me on DVD and it is fascinating to look at the inside of your own head and verify, despite some oopinions to the contrary, that there is something in there.

peterike,
Kill them all, they are of no use

Good God man what would you have done, executed the 10 year old who killed? Tell me that and I will put you on the ignore list. These cases are hard. It is easy to say that the Guardian and their supporters are all wet but that does not mean that there is, or should be, a simple answer. There are separate issues here.
1. What to do with an adult who does evil.
2. What to do with a child who does evil.