How does this tie into this election season, you ask? Well, the Republicans are supposed to be tough on crime. They claim to be tough on drugs. Tough on criminals. They build more prisons. They send more people to war. They preach moral values. They claim to protect families.
Remember the days when the Republicans claimed the "liberals" were soft on crime? Remember Willie Horton? The truth is that poverty has a role in crime. Democrats said it then and they were evicerated. Conservatives have scoffed at the crime-poverty link for years. According to people like William Bennett, we could rid of crime if we just "aborted black babies", but that would be wrong...(wink, wink).
The point of this post is to say that conservatives are helping create a class of desperate citizens, living paycheck to paycheck and deeper in debt. How much longer can we deprive people and expect that building more prisons will be the answer? How much longer can we focus on fighting wars abroad, while ignoring the problems in on our streets? How much longer can we afford to pay for police and security here, while spending billions for barely any security in Iraq?
Maybe President Bush has it right. He thinks things are going alright in Iraq. He thinks things are getting better. Maybe Iraq is his basis for comparison. I mean, we have tons of crime in America, but it isn't Baghdad...or Kabul for that matter. However, if you are a conservative, and still think it is REPUBLICANS who are tough on crime, realize that they CREATE more crime than they stop. The proof is in the statistics.