Dakota Beacon

Take a gander at the opening line from a New York Times story.

Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, but, once stopped, were no more likely to be arrested.

The story proceeds to characterize the facts in the opening line as shocking indictments of racist NYPD policies. It doesn't occur to the writer that equal minority and white arrest rates blow away any concern that racial profiling is occurring, but in fact point up the likelihood that minorities are disproportionately committing crimes.

Rather than acknowledging reality and tracing root causes of high minority crime--like family disintegration, drugs, and gang involvement exacerbated by shiftlessness-enabling government handouts--and then using real data to solve real problems, the writer does what liberals reflexively do: misplace blame and enable more problems.

The Times story reminds me of research I did a few years ago in which I found similarly inane "logic." The Wisconsin State Journal editorial from which I now cite is no longer online, so I have reproduced the piece for you HERE. I caution you, however, that the nonsense expressed throughout the piece will test your sense of humor and sanity. Here's a little gem from the editorial:

Wisconsin rounds up and imprisons thousands of lawbreakers every year, outpacing states with higher crime rates in our relentless zeal to scour the streets of scofflaws.

At the time of my research, my first thought was, "The writer(s) can’t be that thick… can they?" So I decided to do a test which I now duplicate for you.

Let’s reword the sentence to see if the meaning can be changed. One way to restate would be to observe that Wisconsin puts more outlaws in prison than states with higher crime rates. But darn it, the meaning stays the same.

Trying again, we find that because other states jail fewer criminals, crime rates are higher than Wisconsin's rates. But the meaning remains unchanged.

We could restate as follows: Wisconsin locks up more lawbreakers than other states, so Wisconsin's crime rate is lower.

Oops.

No matter how the editorial's ditzy illogic is reworded, it's clear that the writers were clueless as to how dumb the statement sounded. Unfortunately, for people addicted to mushy thinking, the Wisconsin State Journal's “logic” has shock value. The flawed reasoning is: Other states have higher crime and yet don’t see fit to jail people at the rate at which Wisconsin does. So gee, Wisconsin should be like the other states. Higher crime can’t possibly be caused by not jailing criminals—can it?

To which clear thinkers answer. "No, of course not--at least not for people so locked in childish feel-good that acknowledging reality presents unbearable unpleasantness."

"Thinkers" such as the writers of the Times story and Wisconsin State Journal editorial are the people now firmly in control of America's media, schools, and government.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

God help us all.

Click HERE to receive Chuck's work by email FREE

© 2010 Chuck Rogér