PROGRESSIVISM PUTTING KIDS AT RISK
By Bob Confer

Punishments don’t seem to fit the crime anymore.

A great deal of governmental and judicial action that has occurred in recent history has been of a progressive mindset. By combining supposed intellectuality and compassion many of our leaders and judges have attempted to create a kinder, gentler government rule. It is believed by these individuals that discipline should be lessened and that the onus should fall upon society and government working together to reform the guilty individual.

Far too often this progressive movement has proven to be nothing more a whole lot of wishful thinking. The end results by no means match the desired outcome, the reason being a vast majority of criminal psyches are so dark they cannot be rehabilitated as easily as the progressives would like to believe. By lessening jail time and instituting lighter sentences, true discipline has been cast aside, paving the way for freely-roaming guilty parties to continue the criminal actions and behaviors that got them in trouble in the first place.

Progressivism has, in essence, ended-up putting power into the hands of society’s dredges. This sad reality is grossly apparent through recent developments in adjudication and lawmaking regarding the vilest of criminals: the sexual deviants who prey on young children.

The progressive mindset helped start the year off quite poorly in Vermont. Confessed pedophile Mark Hulett - who raped a little girl repeatedly over a four-year period that began when she was all of six years old – received a veritable slap-on-the-wrist by Judge Edward Cashman. Hulett was sentenced to only 60 days in prison for this heinous crime, the judge opting instead for a sex offender treatment program. Judge Cashman’s progressivism has, without a doubt, eroded his logic. He emphasized the quality of life of a deviant over that of the little girl who lived a nightmare. Cashman said he no longer believes in handing out a stiff sentence because, “it accomplishes nothing of value. It doesn’t make anything better.”

Sadly, that same “politically-correct” mentality seems to be the legislative centerpiece for a good many lawmakers right here in our own state. Progressivism – promoted mostly by the downstate politicos - has created a political impasse in what is the legislation du jour…the development of a system that would institute stiffer penalties for sex offenders. The Senate and Assembly are at odds over the safety of our children and it appears as if this philosophical conflict won’t be rectified anytime soon. This will only delay the passage of much needed legislative reform. Every day that this reform is delayed yields yet another day of putting our children in harms way.

Politics and geography need to be ignored and laws passed, preferably the laws being offered by the Senate, which has brought to the table a more common-sense plan. In unison with the Governor, the Senate has proposed some very strong measures that strive for a more old-school approach of dealing with sex offenders by emphasizing punishment over rehabilitation. They want to take the danger off the streets and out of the playgrounds by instituting lifetime registration of sex offenders, longer prison terms and life-long confinement of Level 3 sex offenders (who it is proven cannot be reformed).

The downstate faction of the Assembly - who unfortunately posses the Assembly’s voting power - begs to differ. They, too, want to introduce a series of sex offender regulations, but driven by misdirected compassion and the intellectual vanity of New York City, their plan is much softer and lenient. They want to wait for the Federal Government to set guidelines for the sex offender registry in 2007 before setting State standards. Worse yet, they would like to maintain the status quo of jail terms, opting instead for the socially-progressive route of strengthening the monitoring of offenders and offering more rehabilitative services to these souls.

The Assembly’s plan does little for the safety of our children. They seem content in allowing child rapists and sexual assaulters to live among us, because such judicial benevolence is – supposedly - the politically correct thing to do. Much like Vermont’s Judge Cashman they are driven by a progressive attitude which blindly insists that all human beings are intrinsically good and can be reformed through humane treatment.

The harsh reality is, many human beings, especially deviants, possess a dark side that no reformation can ever eliminate. By allowing sexual predators to freely roam about for the sake of being a kinder and gentler nation we are conversely becoming a harsher and more dangerous nation.

There are times when progressivism should not be followed. This is one of them. In this case, Progressivism is only putting our kids in harm’s way.