Holding Parents Responsible

Pillsbury opens his column by saying, “It is a typically American response to a serious social problem: Make it a crime.”

I feel that most Americans would agree with the reverse of this--that the typical response to a crime is to make it into a social problem and thus absolve the criminal of guilt and not punish, but rather rehabilitate him.

Crimes are committed by criminals and criminals must not be absolved of responsibility for them. It isn’t society that kills bystanders from moving cars or mugs grandfathers for a few dollars, it isn’t society that holds up liquor stores or bilks investors--it is the criminal!

It has become fashionable, for the last several decades, to make society the culprit. We are told that criminals are simply expressing their anger, that their behavior is a logical consequence of being oppressed and discriminated against. If this is so, then an overwhelming majority of Holocaust survivors or Vietnamese refugees should have been criminals. The fact is that there is comparatively little crime among them.

The time has come to reject the guilt trip laid on us by the sociologists and shrinks, and other well-meaning but unrealistic people. Our society is being threatened by the barbarians among us, those who do not accept or even know of the values we share--sanctity of human life, personal responsibility, obligation and consideration towards others. These barbarians have forfeited their right to live among civilized people; like animals they should be locked and kept in cages.

SI FRUMKIN

Studio City