It seems to me that if we want a society that is both free and civilized, one where we do not have to simply accept things like mass shootings of children by sexually deranged individuals seeking to go out in a blaze of shocking infamy, then we need to fix the foundation. The solution is not complicated. It is a fork with two tines.
First, we must have a moral society. An immoral people cannot be free. That is not a theory; it is a reality. The more individuals abandon internal restraint, the more external control becomes necessary. And with each new layer of control, whether through surveillance, regulation, or enforcement, freedom is diminished. A society cannot remain free unless its citizens choose to do what is right even when they are not being watched. The only alternative to self-government is state control. There is no middle ground.
Second, we must approach criminal justice from a paradigm of deterrence rather than prevention. The modern system attempts to prevent crime by making it difficult or impossible to commit one without being caught. This has led to a culture of surveillance, an endless expansion of procedural law, and a justice system that is more concerned with control than with righteousness. True justice does not come from reducing risk; it comes from instilling fear in those who contemplate evil. The law should not merely manage crime but condemn it. It should impose consequences that reflect the moral gravity of the offense. The point is not to trap the criminal, but to warn him.
The proper system would balance the influence on potential criminals from both of these directions. First, a moral society exerts positive influence on the people in it, including the potential criminal. People choose what is right because it is right, because they have been trained to value righteousness, and because they do not want to bring shame on themselves, their families, or their communities. Second, a deterrent justice system exerts negative pressure where people avoid evil because they fear the cost of doing it. Both are necessary. One without the other will fail. A society without morality collapses into chaos. A society without deterrence collapses into permissiveness. A society without either becomes a playground for monsters as we are experiencing today.
If we want to preserve freedom and maintain order, or to restore those things, we must train people to love what is good and to hate what is evil and we must return to laws that are not just procedural but moral. Until then, we are not preventing collapse, but merely managing it.
First, we must have a moral society. An immoral people cannot be free. That is not a theory; it is a reality. The more individuals abandon internal restraint, the more external control becomes necessary. And with each new layer of control, whether through surveillance, regulation, or enforcement, freedom is diminished. A society cannot remain free unless its citizens choose to do what is right even when they are not being watched. The only alternative to self-government is state control. There is no middle ground.
Second, we must approach criminal justice from a paradigm of deterrence rather than prevention. The modern system attempts to prevent crime by making it difficult or impossible to commit one without being caught. This has led to a culture of surveillance, an endless expansion of procedural law, and a justice system that is more concerned with control than with righteousness. True justice does not come from reducing risk; it comes from instilling fear in those who contemplate evil. The law should not merely manage crime but condemn it. It should impose consequences that reflect the moral gravity of the offense. The point is not to trap the criminal, but to warn him.
The proper system would balance the influence on potential criminals from both of these directions. First, a moral society exerts positive influence on the people in it, including the potential criminal. People choose what is right because it is right, because they have been trained to value righteousness, and because they do not want to bring shame on themselves, their families, or their communities. Second, a deterrent justice system exerts negative pressure where people avoid evil because they fear the cost of doing it. Both are necessary. One without the other will fail. A society without morality collapses into chaos. A society without deterrence collapses into permissiveness. A society without either becomes a playground for monsters as we are experiencing today.
If we want to preserve freedom and maintain order, or to restore those things, we must train people to love what is good and to hate what is evil and we must return to laws that are not just procedural but moral. Until then, we are not preventing collapse, but merely managing it.
