>Do you actually disagree with this proposition? Do you think that if I rob
a bank, or perhaps, since we are on LBO I should say, if I found a bank,
and am hauled in front of Doug's revolutionary tribunal, I should be able
defend myself by saying, I wasn't responsible! I am just a creature of
society! Bourgeois ideology made me do it!
>
Not long ago (i.e. before rape shield laws were enacted), men accused of rape would say "she made me do it" and the mostly male courts would buy the argument. The right wing ex cop who shot execution-style the first openly gay SF supervisor Harvey Milk said that 'junk food made him do it' and got away with a murder. Such defences used to prove just anger among not just progressives but most common-sense people.
Fast forward to the new millenium, and you have the multi-culti pwogie crowd using the same argument to defend assorted criminals. What a strange world.
>But my main point here is that I don't think that the left should buy into
this bad old 60s liberal palaver about the poor widdle cwiminals and their
bad enviwonments that isn't their fault.
IIt's a sure sign that the self styled pwogies have little to say other than ritualistic reiteration of the past battles and war cries. The opposition to death penalty and to politically biased criminal justice system made a perfect sense form the left's point of view in the times of Sacco and Vanzetti or Mccarthyism. But it makes no sense today, when the criminal justice system is NOT a tool of political repression. To be certain, criminal justice is being used by politicians to win easy popularity while not offending any entrenched interests - but it is NOT the tool to suppress the political will of the masses.
If anything, the masses demand stiff punishment because it is them - not the ruling class or elite intellectuals - who pay the price of crime.
Babbling about "poor widdle cwiminals" seems to be a perfect way to feel good about one's "pwogwessive" credentials while staying safely away from those issues where feathers still can be ruffled, like for example union organizing.
wojtek