An opinion piece from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Roots of gang violence feed off '60s
July 18, 2005

Gang violence is on the rise in Minneapolis again. Homicides in 2005 are up about 45 percent vs. this time last year. Criminals are increasingly young and brazen. Recently, a 15-year-old boy was shot dead in broad daylight.

What's to be done? The ideas are familiar. Better policing could make a real difference. (The city's proposal for 60 new officers will help.) But on the social policy front, we hear -- yet again -- calls for more money for summer jobs, extended recreation center hours and the like.

Jobs and rec centers are fine things. But the gang problem would likely persist if we had a 24-hour gymnasium on every block.

Last week, papers carried the story of a gang rape in California. Six teenagers assaulted a 13-year-old girl in a park restroom about 11:30 a.m., while a crowd of boys and young men cheered. Presumably, lots of rec centers were open at that time of day.

Behind our debate over how to deal with gangs is a clash of world views. Many people in social service agencies or university faculty rooms see human beings as basically good and naturally cooperative. They view crime and violence as aberrations, and essentially a result of injustice. If people are given opportunities (jobs and rec centers), they reason, they are likely to behave peacefully and rationally.

Ordinary citizens view human nature more realistically. They see their 2-year-old throw a tantrum over a Popsicle, or their spouse cut someone off in rush-hour traffic, and recognize that tendencies toward selfishness and aggression are innate and universal.

The California gang rapists are not creatures from another planet. But if we all start life with certain tendencies in common with them, why don't most of us behave like them?

The answer is rooted in culture and family. Most of us learned to control our aggressive, antisocial impulses as youngsters. Our mothers taught us empathy. Our fathers taught us not to hit our sister. We don't steal tennis shoes at the mall, but it's not because we fear the police. We police ourselves, exercising the conscience and self-control we were taught.

Kids in gangs often start life differently. Many have young, unmarried mothers, some of whom are high school dropouts or drug abusers. Few have fathers who insist they get home on time or do their homework. As a result, they develop neither a strong moral code nor the ability to control their aggressive impulses. They may well be economically poor, but most economically poor people are honest, decent and peaceful. The poverty that produces gangs is social, moral and spiritual.

A lonely, morally adrift young man drawn to the sense of belonging a gang offers him for the first time in his life -- not to mention thrills and easy money -- isn't likely to be tempted by a low-wage job cleaning a park in the hot sun. And he likely lacks the self-discipline to keep such a job anyway.

The underclass culture that has spawned homicidal youth gangs is relatively new. It didn't exist in this form in the 1930s, for example, when poverty was much more widespread. What has changed?

For one thing, the 1960s "cultural revolution" happened. Some of America's most privileged citizens led it -- intellectuals, lawyers and entertainment executives. They urged Americans to shake off the shackles of "bourgeois" norms -- the very qualities that had helped generations rise from poverty to the middle class.

The '60s revolution was about personal "liberation." Recreational sex? "Make love, not war." Drugs? "Whatever turns you on." Teachers, parents and police? "Challenge authority."

The '60s also launched the War on Poverty. Though well-intentioned, it created incentives for self-destructive behavior such as out-of-wedlock childbearing and welfare dependence. Its mantra was that the poor are victims without responsibilities, whose behavior has nothing to do with their plight.

Flipping burgers for low pay to get work experience? A chump's game.

Americans of all social backgrounds are still dealing with the fallout of the '60s. But when middle-class kids experiment with marijuana or sexual promiscuity, they can generally rally and survive. Most have the social, educational and financial resources to get back on track.

But the '60s revolution encouraged behavior that prevents the poor from overcoming their disadvantages. The sexual revolution, coupled with welfare policy, has decimated the family in underclass neighborhoods. There, drugs overwhelm their users instead of providing Friday night entertainment. When people's lives are already on the edge, irresponsible behavior can send them off the cliff.

The debilitating attitudes of the '60s are still with us, too often amplified by the entertainment, advertising and business communities.

It's hard to discourage underclass 15-year-olds from getting pregnant when Paris Hilton and Abercrombie & Fitch celebrate recreational sex. It's hard to discourage gang violence when "Grand Theft Auto" -- a best-selling video game -- rewards players for shooting policemen.

As we contemplate youth gangs, it's time to contemplate our own contribution to the problem.

AMEN!

I've said it all along: You have to have a license to drive. You have to have a license to practice law, medicine or accounting because these are matters of public trust. You have to have a license to be a law enforcement officer. You even have to have a dog license in Midland, TX.

But any idiot too stupid to go to planned parenthood, or too doped up to control their reproductive habits, or too young to fully consider consequences can have children. And parenthood is the ultimate issue of public trust.

As a result, we have a 'subculture' of children being raised by children who do not know how to parent, and they may never learn in time. The children are raised in desperate circumstances with no real hope of overcoming their nurture. It is the inner resolve of a strong child to break away from this lifestyle, most don't.

I don't think that 'a little understanding', 'a new gymnasium' or a new park will be any answer to a problem that we are failing as a society to address.

But Planned Parenthood, and it's utilitarian/disposable view of human life is not part of the solution--its part of the problem.

PP actually encourages unmarried teens to have sex, but to be "responsible" about it, i.e. use birth control, and if that fails, get an abortion. It's this view that that has caused an explosion in premaritial pregnancies, millions of which end in abortion, a high percent done at PP clinics.

It used to be that if a high school girl got pregnant, she was said to be "in trouble."

And she was. It was a great disgrace, and most quietly dropped out of school and went to a home for unwed mothers until they gave birth. The child was then placed up for adoption. Adoptive parents were carefully screened, and as a result most adopted children ended up in very good families. The unwed mother returned to school, and might finish school a year behind. Having a baby out of wedlock was a VERY BIG DEAL. And every high school kid knew it. Consequently, sex and marriage were taken far more seriously than they are today.

Today, thanks to PP, and plently of others of the same persuation, human life is cheap. Children are allowed to raise children, and gangs of children with no real parents roam the streets.

This is just one of many Great Ideas from the 60s and 70s, that have had disastrous consequences.

Another Great Idea from that era that has failed, is the closing down of most state mental hospitals. Starting in the early 60s, there was a great "reform" in mental health commitment laws, and thousands of seriously disturbed people were released from state hospitals, and turned out on the street. These people were supposed to be treated on an out-patient basis at "community mental health centers."

Of course, most legislators forgot to get around to funding very many of these centers. And in any case, the seriously deranged are notorious for going off their meds unless they are very closely watched. Such people cannot be efficiently treated on an out-patient basis.

Many of these people prove to be extremely dangerous, and many people have been killed or otherwise been gravely harmed by them. Instead of being safely cared for by mental health professionals, many of these people end up in jail or prison, even death row. Many others pan handle and live squaled lives as the homeless. Such are the tragic consequences of mental health reform.

Terry - James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal Online, Best of the Web Today series calls your argument the 'Roe Effect'.

Shannon - AMEN!