Western Standard - August 03, 2023


Criminals need to be held responsible for their crimes


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

202.31265

Word count

764

Sentence count

53

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The excuses used to dodge and avoid personal responsibility are myriad. It s certainly more comforting to direct your eye outwards when things may be going poorly for you than to consider that you may have caused all or part of your current problems.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 The common denominator. Let's talk about that. The common denominator in all your failures
00:00:03.320 is you. Yes, yes, that's a harsh statement. Few people ever want to face that reality.
00:00:09.520 That's why so many people gladly embrace the opportunity to blame somebody or something else
00:00:14.020 for their problems when they can. Of course, we have an ever-growing state with governments
00:00:18.600 willing to indulge people when they don't want to take responsibility for or accept the consequences
00:00:23.080 for their actions either. All the excuses. Society made me do it. The drugs made me do it. My parents
00:00:28.500 didn't hug me enough. It's not my fault I got burned. Nobody told me the coffee would be hot.
00:00:33.600 Systemic racism held me back or my ex-wife is the root of all my problems. Gritty corporations 0.99
00:00:39.140 prevent me from getting ahead. The excuses used to dodge and avoid personal responsibility are
00:00:44.060 myriad. It's certainly more comforting to direct your eye outwards when things may be going poorly
00:00:49.740 for you than to consider that you may have caused all or part of your current problems,
00:00:54.080 especially when you have a world that's increasingly saying nothing's your fault.
00:01:00.520 There's many areas where we need people to start taking personal responsibility, but I want to focus
00:01:04.280 on crime. What got me going this time was a tweet from the Western Standards' Arthur Green. It showed
00:01:09.820 an electric vehicle charging station and the charging cables have been cut off by thieves.
00:01:14.760 Crooks have realized that the copper in those heavy-duty cables is valuable and thefts are becoming a
00:01:19.620 problem throughout North America. So I searched out and read a few articles. This is a growing problem
00:01:23.600 everywhere. Now those articles offered all sorts of advice in dealing with the issue, ranging from
00:01:27.680 keeping cars in garages to bringing in detachable cables or to have retractable cables that be hidden
00:01:33.820 when not in use. But you know what I didn't hear? One piece of advice, one thing saying on how we're going
00:01:38.840 to deal with this, none of them said we should crack down on the bloody thieves. None. Just as it isn't
00:01:45.560 advisable for a woman to walk around alone during late hours in a bad part of town while wearing 1.00
00:01:50.300 revealing clothing, it doesn't absolve the perpetrator if she's assaulted. Yes, some personal responsibility
00:01:57.060 falls on property owners to work to ensure their items can't easily be stolen. But we shouldn't have
00:02:02.600 to keep locking everything we have down for fear of the thieves. If the responsibility to protect
00:02:07.880 properly fully falls upon the owner, then let's expand the right to protect our property with force.
00:02:12.800 Yeah, I know that everyone's won't like hearing about that. So let's get to those criminals. It
00:02:17.520 reminded me of a town hall meeting the RCMP held in my area when we were suffering under a particularly
00:02:22.020 bad rural crime wave. We were told to consider installing gates on our driveways and upgrading
00:02:26.640 our alarm systems, maybe even get a dog. Well, I got lots of dogs. I didn't move to the country to live
00:02:31.580 in a fortress for fear of thieves. They also told us not to defend our property lest we be charged for
00:02:36.700 assaulting a thief. Violent crime and property crimes are rising across the country, the majority
00:02:43.400 of which are committed by chronic offenders who have been in and out and released back into society.
00:02:48.980 It's time, it's past time to put the onus or responsibility on the offenders. I don't care
00:02:53.880 about their background. I don't care what led them to the life of crime. It's unfortunate, but that's not
00:02:58.100 my problem. Their crimes are my problem. And if they've been committing dozens of crimes, it's time
00:03:03.400 to consider warehousing them rather than wasting time and money reforming them. It wouldn't be that
00:03:08.000 costly to give truly long sentences to chronic offenders. We're spending all that money and more
00:03:12.900 having them in and out of the courts and keeping them in remand centers while they steal from and
00:03:16.580 assault innocent victims. There's no simple or quick solutions to the growing disorder and crime
00:03:21.440 issues. The trend is tied to a tougher economy, the breakdown of family units, and an opioid addiction
00:03:26.700 epidemic. There's lots we can talk about. But we need to change attitudes and what's considered
00:03:32.100 socially acceptable. That's no easy task, but it has to be done. The excuses have to be dismissed
00:03:37.240 and personal reality and responsibility, I should say, must be applauded. Until that happens,
00:03:43.360 though, crime is only going to continue to get worse.