The Internet Monk
"the power of opinion, the phenomenon of speech, the impact of truth"
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The Case of Lionel Tate: Conservatism Hijacked
by Michael Spencer
Conservatives
can usually be trusted to know what conservatism is all about. We've
become a movement that trades in ideas expressed in books, opinion
columns, web pages, speeches and, occasionally, legislation.
Conservatism is an intellectual movement as much as a cultural movement.
We rightly chide liberals for deserting the intellectual battlefield and
fighting primarily with emotional appeals to victim groups, yielding
ever greater inconsistency and ever more tyranny.
When conservatives become emotional, we are much less trustworthy. For instance, conservatives never sound worse than when they are whining about their treatment in the media or the bigotry of Hollywood toward conservatives. Shut up and go start your programs. Christian conservative carping about homosexuality is not anything that ought to be on C-SPAN.
Emotionalism about our agenda is also dangerous ground. Conservatives are distressed over the general state of the culture. Issues like crime, the decline of our schools, and illegal drugs affect us deeply because we care about out kids and the future of our families and communities. And it is on these emotional issues, particularly the issue of youth violence, that we are tempted to betray our better principles. Such is the case with the mandatory life sentence handed to fourteen year old Lionel Tate for the brutal murder of a child, a crime committed when Tate was twelve.
We as conservatives know better than to put the unlimited power of mandatory sentencing into the hands of judges. Nothing in human history or human nature says that society is well served when a judge has no choice but to send a 14 year old to prison without parole. Nothing in our conservative philosophy says that individuals are better served when a judge is given no room for disgression in the face of obvious incompetence of counsel. Our concern for law and order, and our concern for the punishment of the criminal are not served by treating Lionel Tate as if he were worse than Charles Manson. I'm all for victims rights, but courts using unrestrained mandatory sentences on juveniles are making plenty of victims of their own.
It's especially discouraging to hear conservatives talk as if the brutal murder justifies the abuse of sentencing power. Some conservatives seem to feel that if Lionel Tate spends his life as an example of judicial excess, it will be a deterrent. Would anyone like to suggest that Lionel Tate would not have killed his playmate if another Lionel Tate were rotting in prison for the same act? Does anyone think Lionel Tate considered his actions in an adult manner capable of understanding deterrence by way of mandatory sentences?
When did it become conservative to treat juveniles like adults? Are we unable to distinguish between heinous acts committed by adults and the similar, but considerably differentiated, acts committed by immature and oversized twelve year olds? If a prosecutor offers Tate three years plus probation, what is our argument to say the only other good alternative is life without parole? Are we saying that the entire concept of juvenile justice only applies when our sensibilities are not profoundly offended? Are we really so foolish as to say that Lionel Tate is a danger to society forever because what he was at 12 he will always be? Is this our conservative view of human beings? I thought the liberals were the determinists?
Just for the record, I think Lionel Tate deserves time in prison, intense help, stiff probation and the stigma of killing for the rest of his life. I cannot imagine the grief and loss of his victim's family. But I do not believe Lionel Tate is the poster child for what we need to do to change the problems in our youth culture. Lionel Tate never got to say whether he would accept the prosecutor's plea agreement because he is a juvenile. His mother made the choice for him. Yet we are locking him away forever? Give me a break. This young man is not the face of violence that conservatives are so upset about. With one possible exception. He is black.
And that brings me to what is my most troubling and ugly observation. I do not believe conservatives are racists, but I think many conservatives are easy prey for racial stereotypes, particularly about crime. I have to believe that if Lionel Tate were recognizable within white conservatism as one of our kids, we would be saying a lot more a lot sooner. If conservatives aren't calling for the death penalty for Tate, why aren't they calling for the sentence to be overturned and a more humane standard applied? It is because conservatives are emotional on this one, not principled. They want to teach a lesson and the harshness of the sentence seems to serve their purposes. We need a time out.
Conservative emotionalism has filled up prisons with young black men incarcerated for ridiculous amounts of time for violations of hopelessly ineffective drug laws. Our Libertarian friends may be somewhat over the top on the drug legalization issue, but they are absolutely right on about sentencing run amuck. My own experiences with federal prisoners have convinced me that mandatory sentencing is frequently an abuse of power and it would be a good day if our conservative thinkers and writers began leading us to stop defending what is a shameless empowering of government over individuals without limitation or the capacity for self correction. (For a better idea of how to fight the drug war, real the relevant chapter in The O'Reilley Factor.) And don't talk about the deterring effect of mandatory sentences. Young people are using drugs more than ever.
When distressed, Americans want to do something. History teaches us that what societies do in the emotionalism of troubled times often becomes another source of trouble. Prohibition is the lesson, but we have not really learned it. (Many Christian conservatives would do it all over again.) The post-Columbine "zero tolerance" policies are another example of this foolishness, as are trigger locks. The Lionel Tate sentencing is certainly doing something about the problem of violence in youth culture. It's doing the wrong thing.
I know many conservatives will differ with me, but I hope at least one conservative sets aside emotion and takes the more complex, less certain path of a new trial with competent council and another outcome: Governor Jeb Bush of Florida.