3. "They Want Me With My Hands Up"

Some folks in Chicago are tossing around the idea of using the National Guard to help stem the violence in the city. There have been 100+ homicides in the first 4 months of 2010. The mayor and lots of others are against it, but it's an interesting idea. What do you do when a segment of the population is essentially cannibalizing itself?

I had this conversation recently with someone who was adamant that lack of opportunity was the driving force behind criminal behavior. I.e. if they had something better to do they wouldn't be in the streets. I don't buy it. I'm always struck by the fact that victims of violence grow up in the same neighborhoods, go to same schools, and face the same socioeconomic constraints as their attackers. So how does one end up the shooter and the other the shootee?

No doubt opportunity is part of it. Kids in poor neighborhoods are presented with opportunities for delinquency on a scale that kids in more affluent neighborhoods rarely are. But whether they take that opportunity I think has much more to do with the job their parents are doing than most liberals are willing to admit. As a good liberal, I hate to vilify poor parents, but if a poor white couple raised a bigot in Appalachia, I think we'd have something to say to them about it. We ought to have as least as much to say to poor parents who raise shooters in Englewood.