Connecticut Coddles And Responsibility Dies
Recent news in Connecticut might give the impression that the state motto has been changed from “Qui transtulit sustinet” to whatever is Latin for “Not responsible.”
First this month there were the congressmen blaming the trouble in housing on “unscrupulous lenders” who, with mortgages with little or no money down, no income verification, and “teaser” interest rates supposedly lured unsuspecting people into buying big houses they couldn’t afford. With the economy weakening, many of those new homeowners now are in danger of foreclosure and losing their jobs. But they still can turn on the television and watch programs like “Flip This House,” a remnant of their recent mass delusion that speculating in real estate is the path to perpetual riches instead of the same old boom-and-bust business.
Just weeks ago some of the congressmen now lamenting the fall in housing prices also had been lamenting the homelessness that has resulted in part from the spectacular rise in housing prices. These congressmen are the champions of politics, managing to play an issue both ways sanctimoniously.
Then there was the death of another infant in Hartford, this time a 1-year-old whose head was smashed in by a sad-sack, unskilled, young single mother babysitting for her friend, another sad-sack, unskilled, young single mother. Television stations got tearful interviews with the dead child’s mom, who explained that she and her friend made their babysitting arrangement because neither could afford regular day care. The TV stations seemed to concur in this diagnosis of the problem -- the high cost of day care. Though there were no fathers in the vicinity, no reporters asked about them, nor about how the expense of parenthood could have been such a surprise.
Then ministers from the Connecticut State Missionary Baptist Convention gathered at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to object to proposals to toughen criminal laws and particularly to impose long or life terms on people convicted of a third violent felony. Because most people in prison in Connecticut are members of racial minorities, the ministers said, tougher criminal laws would be racially discriminatory and would cause prison overcrowding. Instead of tougher laws, the ministers wanted more efforts to rehabilitate criminals, even the chronically violent.
But if tougher criminal laws would be racially discriminatory, having any criminal law is racially discriminatory as well. Thus the ministers were arguing only for having no criminal law at all and never holding anyone to account for anything. And if prison overcrowding justifies releasing the chronically violent, there will be nothing for the people of Connecticut to do but arm themselves or ask the ministers to lead them in fearful prayer.
Then something called the Governor’s Early Childhood Summit convened in Berlin. The meeting attendees were told that the outcome of a child’s life is largely determined by age 3 and that government should offer more services to infants and their parents -- such parents as can be found anyway. The importance of infancy was treated as news, though it used to be considered the ordinary wisdom of the ages, as it was considered a few years ago in an episode of the television drama “Law & Order,” wherein the New York City police detective played by Jerry Orbach sardonically remarked of a crying baby discovered at a slum apartment crime scene: “How about if I just take him to Riker’s now?”
On and on and on it goes -- coddling the symptoms of the many failures of responsibility without ever insisting on responsibility, so there is never improvement, just more of what is coddled and more expense of coddling as Connecticut heads toward a future where no one has parents but everyone has his own social worker and assistant attorney general. But then who will be left to produce anything of value for government to confiscate to pay them with?
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer.
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