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A New-Age Crystal Ball Gazer Looks at the Future of Crime
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12463 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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7 / 1987 |
1,497 Words |
| Author
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Herbert London
Herbert London is dean of the Gallatin Division of New
York University and Senior Fellow of the Hudson Institute. |
CRIME WARPS
The Future of Crime in America
Georgette Bennett
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987
435 pp., $19.95
Most books represent an author's bias. Some books are simply a statement of prejudice. Others conceal bias through an artful collection of anecdotes that in the aggregate reinforce a point of view. And still others contain postulates unsupported by hard data that belong in the realm of speculation. Crime Warps: The Future of Crime in America by Georgette Bennett is a combination of all these books.
Bennett has "studied" at the John Naisbitt school of speculation. Its central maxim is, if you're going to guess, guess often. Many guess are better than a few guesses, since once in a while you may hit the mark. Bennett does indeed hit the mark on occasion. However, she misses the mark most of the time due to faulty extrapolations, wrong-headed assumptions, and a reliance on questionable data.
Like Naisbitt, Bennett has a penchant for adorning the obvious with the profundity of a future projection - take for example, "crime warp." But rarely does she lose sight of her bias. Jerry Falwell is portrayed as an ideologue attempting to impose his brand of morality on the nation, while Ira Glaser is a representative of the ACLU trying to protect the rights of minorities. Is it any wonder that Governor Cuomo described this book as "insightful and intelligent"?
Bennett wishes to encourage a new-age interpretation of the Bill of Rights. According to Bennett - in what is unquestionably a central point - many Americans believe a breakdown in morality is responsible for an increase in lawlessness. This point as stated is unobjectionable - it squares with most polls. But then comes the fillip: "In exchange for a moral renaissance, large segments of the population are willing to compromise vital parts of the Bill of Rights" (emphasis in the original).
Hers is a crusading denunciation of "a climate that legitimates monism and ethnocentrism, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klanners, and abortion vigilantes." This is all rather surprising since the last I heard there were more FBI agents in neo-Nazi cults and the Klan than true fascist believers. And I haven't noticed that Jerry Falwell, Bennett's bete noire, wants to suspend any rights guaranteed by the
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