It's the little things

It's the little signs of progress that warm my heart.

James Q. Wilson - Can I Be a Meaningful Blogger?

"A lot of readers have suggested that I am not a helpful blogger because I refer people to other studies for data to support my arguments. These critics are probably right. Were I devoted to blogging full time, I would quote all the data and summarize all of the studies, thereby getting nothing else done. I had assumed when I started my blog messages that people would pause, think, and look up facts. A few have, but most seem to have opinions they like to express quickly. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it doesn't advance knowledge. Let me join the opinion parade by offering a few of my own: This country imprisons too many people on drug charges with little observable effect. A better solution can be found in Hawaii, where a judge uses his powers to keep drug users in treatment programs (it's called Project Hope; look it up). The costs of crime are hard to measure (so are the costs of confinement). The reader who does not want to drive five miles to find the book, Prison State, that discusses this in detail is wasting my time and his. It is not hard to study deterring crime, but I can't imagine trying to teach someone in a blog how to do a regression analysis. I wish I could do that, but it would take time, and blog commenters seem not to have much time."

The fact that the most prominent proponent of "broken windows" policing seems to be advocating some form of drug legalization is a great sign.

You combine Rudy Giuliani's courage in taking down mafia figures - people engaged in serious and dangerous criminal activity - with a greater attention to liberty around issues where freedom is a better corrective than law enforcement or stiffer sentences - drugs and guns are two of many such places, to my mind - and you will have much more effective law enforcement, a culture of liberty which better promotes responsibility around such issues while acknowledging the limitations of governance, and liberal democratic commitments that we can be proud of.

And this is an important sign that this is, likely, the direction in which we are moving.

Free peoples can't romanticize repression for very long. It goes against their grain. It also violates common sense and leads to an awful lot of failure that responsible people will want to correct.

There is a reason that humanity works from less freedom to more freedom over time. It's not just because it's sweet or because their mommies told them so.

It's because it makes for better citizens and societies.

You doubt that? Spend some time in North Korea or Iran. Then come back and tell me how great repression works.

I'll keep my freedom, thank you very much. And I expect more and better.

Because that what it means to be an American. And to love liberty and democracy.