A Conservative's Musings on All Things Political

Today President Obama became the first American President to visit a prison while in office. The core of his visit was to promote his newest campaign, reforming the criminal justice system. Now this is an issue many conservatives can actually get behind with prominent GOP members such as Rand Paul questioning the logic and wisdom of the current sentencing system. But as Barack Obama has done so many times before he takes an issue where bipartisan progress could be made and turns it into a leftist wet dream. In this case he is advocating increased spending on early childhood education. What? Anyway…

Buried inside his long wordy statement was a tremendously insightful glimpse into the leftist mind. The President said we should all look at the conditions in prison and be grateful that there but for the grace of god go we. WRONG. The president, like the institutional left, seems to think each of us is equally bad and but for luck we could have ended up in prison. WRONG. The vast majority of Americans are not in prison because they decided to NOT COMMIT CRIMES! Those who are there decided to break the law or hang around with those who did. They are not there because they learned to count watching Sesame Street and not in Pre-K, but because they lacked the self control to obey the law. Life isn’t easy for most people. Almost everyone has been in a bad place at one time or another where there was an easy way out that was not legal. The difference is the vast majority of people chose not to commit a crime. Many of us on the right would agree life in prison for a first offense drug dealer and 20 years for a bank robber is not fair and sentencing needs to be re-balanced. But the left has fundamentally believes there are no bad people and nobody is responsible for their own action.

The solution to crime is not more unionized teachers babysitting Pre-K or hot school lunches for all. Crime reduction will only be achieved when parents as well as the community teach people right from wrong, good from bad and to accept personal responsibility for your actions. America is a nation where the quality of an individual should not be judged by the size of one’s wallet and where we believe in second chances and redemption. But there are consequences to actions and while second chances are noble, repeat felons are not “unfortunate”, they are just bad and should be treated very humanly in prison. Sorry Mister President, your prison photo-op was a flop, but rather insightful.