Richard Cohen has discovered that liberal dogma is all wet. Well, at least the dogma that says crime is caused by poverty and other societal failings. He writes that crime is down despite a painful recession:

Whatever the reasons, it now seems fairly clear that something akin to culture and not economics is the root cause of crime. By and large everyday people do not go into a life of crime because they have been laid off or their home is worth less than their mortgage. They do something else, but whatever it is, it does not generally entail packing heat. Once this becomes an accepted truth, criminals will lose what status they still retain as victims. …

The Watts survey [following the 1965 riots] tended to support liberal dogma that criminals were like everyone else, only more desperate. Probably the ultimate example of this was cited to me years ago by a woman who had her necklace yanked from her while walking in Manhattan. When I commiserated with her, she said of the crook — I am not making this up — “he probably needed it more than I did.” This is liberal guilt at its apogee.

Cohen acknowledges that a great deal of social policy was based on a false premise: “It made victims of criminals and criminals of victims (all wealth comes from theft, etc.) — and in so doing, insulted the law-abiding poor who somehow lacked the wit to appreciate their historic plight.”

Well, better late than never. This revelation might suggest that liberals re-examine other premises that have proved dangerous. Perhaps they can take a look at “The government can create wealth” or “The rich need to pay more taxes.” The possibilities in foreign policy are endless. (Let’s start with, “The problem with our policy toward Iran, China, Syria, etc. is that we haven’t tried to engage them.”) Liberals consider their opponents to be dunderheads and anti-intellectuals. It must be a shock to find out that the dunderheads were right about so much.