Summary
GEORGE Will in a column in the Gazette-Mail "Left wing hugs phony crime myths" (June 22) asserts: "Liberalism likes victimization narratives, and the related assumption that individuals are blank slates on which 'society' writes. Hence liberals locate the cause of crime in flawed social conditions that liberalism supposedly can fix."
Will's "blank slates" has reference to John Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," in which he wrote: "Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word. Experience.See the full content of this document
Extract
Views On Crime Are Way Off
John Locke's belief that a human's mind is a blank slate at birth and that what an individual becomes is what he experiences in his societal environment is erroneous.
And George Will's assertion that liberals accept what John Locke ...See the full content of this document
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