You were making an excuse for his behavior, mitigating his own personal responsibility, downplaying his independent agency, were you not?
This^ really goes to the heart of the matter.
Is a person responsible for their actions? If not, then who is? Is the person they victimize responsible?
Or is no one responsible? If that's the case, then no one belongs in jail because nothing is their fault. And if that's true, then there are no victims. But how can that be when the victim is committing the non-criminal act of stealing someone else's property? If that sounds like dead-end nonsense, you're right.
Or, if you want to make the case that a poor person is not responsible for their actions because they're poor---in this case poor and black---then doesn't that imply that poor black people are incapable of controlling themselves?
That sounds really fucking racist. It
is really fucking racist. But that's where the far left finds itself on these kinds of issues. It holds a certain group of people in such low esteem that it impliedly asserts they cannot be held responsible due to lack of competence with respect to anti-social behavior.
Do we grant this kind of leeway to drunk drivers? Hell no we don't. But why not? After all, we're bombarded with advertisements for alcohol on TV, the radio, billboards, and many of us grow up seeing our parents drink. Drinking is a very accepted leisure activity between families, friends, and in the working world too. It's a legal activity that the government permits, and it produces hundreds of millions of tax dollars and supports tens of thousands of jobs if not more. So with all that in mind, how can we possibly hold a drunk driver responsible for his/her actions. He/she is simply a product of American culture. Hell, there's even scientific evidence that some people's genetics predispose them to alcohol addiction. How can we possibly fault them for their actions when they're obviously victims of not only society, but often genetics?
Does anyone buy
that argument?
