I heard a phrase, long ago: where you stand depends on where you sit. What you think about something is influenced by what's going on in your world at the moment.
Had occasion to think of it this morning when listening to an article on NPR.
The article was about the cost of building and maintaining prisons, and how states, already in financial trouble, can't sustain the growth that they're experiencing in that sector. Yet one state is able to slow the growth, they said, and it's the one that you wouldn't expect: Texas. They didn't soften any laws, or let people out early. What they did is make it less likely for a person to go back to jail, by installing programs to train them, change their lives, change their prospects. Drug addicts are forced to go through rehab treatments that address not only the addiction but the lifestyle and attitudes that got them addicted. A gruff-sounding Texas state legislator said that this wasn't softening -- it's tough for the inmates, real tough. But it works.
And I thought: isn't this the sort of program that liberals pushed, years ago, and were scoffed at by places like Texa as weak, mollycoddling? Toss 'em in jail and let 'em rot, wasn't that their response?
Where you stand....
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