Free Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand by Mike S. Adams Page B

criminal conduct from one person to the next. Liberal or progressive theorists—proponents of strain, labeling, or differential association—consider themselves successful if they explain 10 percent of that variation in self-reported criminal conduct.
    But explaining only 10 percent of the variation in criminal conduct means that 90 percent of the variation remains unexplained. So what do criminologists do with the unexplained variance?
    Zach, let’s take a step back for just a second. Remember the concept of unexplained variance, from our discussion of studies of racial disparity in the criminal justice system? In the race studies I mentioned before, criminologists assumed that any variance not explained by legal factors could be attributed to racial discrimination—even when racial discrimination was not measured. In other words, unexplained variance equals racism.
    If progressives can arbitrarily attribute to racism all of the unexplained variance in sentencing between the races, then what stops us from attributing all the unexplained variance in self-reported criminal behavior to free will? If a progressive theory like labeling is only able to explain 10 percent of the variance in self-reported criminal conduct, then the researcher has only shown that 10 percent of the behavior is determined by the theory. If no other theory is specified, then isn’t it fair to say that 90 percent of the variance in self-reported criminal conduct is undetermined? Isn’t that just another way of saying that 90 percent of the variance isn’t determined by anything? Why not just assume that unexplained variance equals free will?
    In the field of criminology, the things criminologists cannot explain are often attributed to racism because that absolves man of personal responsibility. He is seen as a mere victim of his environment. And when criminologists examine man’s own self-confessed criminal conduct, the things he (the criminologist) cannot explain are never attributed to free will. To do so would make the man responsible for his own conduct. Such conclusions are simply not allowed in the field of criminology, any more than they are allowed in the world of Hollywood film producers.
    In the so-called social sciences, everything is a show. It is always a three-act play directed by progressive thinking. In the first act, man is born innocent. In the second act, man is corrupted by “society.” In the third act, the progressive saves him.
    The data may show that the progressive worldview is only right 10 percent of the time. But, in his heart, the progressive believes he is right 100 percent of the time. It doesn’t really matter what the data say. Progressive thinking isn’t very logical. It is often pure emotion feeding on earnest faith in the perfectibility of man. That is the reason why the progressive discipline of criminology hasn’t made much progress in the last fifty years.
    In January, I’ll write to you in more detail about the problems with the leftist understanding of crime. But meanwhile, good luck with your exams, and have a great Christmas break.

LETTER 14
     
    How LBJ Abandoned Kitty Genovese
     
    Dear Zach,
    Progressive approaches to ameliorating crime—and poverty, which progressives tend to see as the major cause of crime—have not been stunningly successful in the past half century. To understand why, let’s rewind to the point in American history, now almost fifty years ago, when those liberal solutions were first being put into practice.
    The spring of 1964 was a difficult time. The Warren Commission was trying to heal the wounds caused by the Kennedy assassination and to bring closure to a murder case that would never reach trial. Lyndon Baines Johnson was trying to step out of the Kennedy shadow and forge a new direction for the American people. Then, one March night in New York City, a killer stepped out of the shadows and opened a new set of wounds—not just on his intended target, but on the