O come off it, guy, lighten up. You know perfectly well you ought to apologise to McGrath in particular for your perfectly barbaric rude comments, yet to squirm out of it you confuse it into a rather self-serving apology to sw's as--I'm still not sure what--a class? a species?

When one is not confused they usually say something is "too easy a target" before not after they attempt to attack and ridicule it.

If you paid any attention to what I or anyone else was trying to say you might have noticed a few things. "What do I care it's not my problem" is again an easy target, but I of course used it ironically in reference to the same phrases in my previous post.

(No, I might as well tell you, you're right, again. Child crime is mostly my fault, well, McGrath and I together, with our armies of young hoodlums, led by the bad sort of social workers with their vicious, maltreated dogs, we will rule the world, and sooner than you think, my dear sir. Perhaps you've been clever enough to find us out, but it's too late. There's nothing you the anonymous poster and his brother-in-law can do to stop us. As it is, you've only managed to disrupt an otherwise sensible discussion we were engaged in as a ruse to give a false appearance of legitimate concern. We obviously hope to find root causes or contributing factors in regard to child crime so we can use them for our diabolical ends.)

If I can get back to my pretense of concern for a moment, I can't remember who said that sanity was largely a social concern, because we take our cues daily from people around us. I think it was John Updike. But I think it's true to a pretty large extent, and applies to child crime, too. There's something like a communicable insanity to it, when it seems to spread or grow, cult-like. One doesn't have to make any excuses for them (they do that for you) but still it might be useful to form an idea what to do to contain it. There was one theory of evil about Hitler that explored the question of whether he believed himself, and it supposed that he came to believe himself in the process of giving speeches and convincing others, in a spiral of social confirmation.

Even I think I sound a bit nutty when I talk about aesthetics and culture as a factor in crimes and violence, but there's this practical sense to it. People are of course responsible for their own actions, but when something seems to be developing off the chart of the "normal" range of moral failings, I think there's also this dangerous aspect of the kinds of bonds people are forming with each other.

Obviously it's frustrating and people object to ideas that might seem to serve as excuses for criminals to make for their actions. Even if that's not what the idea means, some lawyer is bound to use it, and people who live to make excuses for themselves will naturally use anything. It's the main mark of this anti-social mind that you can't get some people see that they are responsible, regardless of the societal patterns or contributing factors. It's like that part of the brain is missing. But it might not be that difficult to sort out the purpose of asking these questions. It makes sense if it's to know how to do our part to prevent further harm, not to excuse harms that people have done.