The Conversation We Need to Be Having
by Glenn Loury
The Conversation
March 23rd, 2009
Jim Wilson wants to have the conversation he wants to have, and I want to have the one I want to have. He thinks his is the only relevant conversation — about policy. I think mine is, at this moment, the more urgent conversation — about values. I believe what we are doing is wrong. Jim doesn't seems to think that's worth discussing. I'm asking him to defend the current edifice of punishment in America, or to join me in trying to change it. "Nothing works" is not an argument. What would I have us do? There is no shortage of proposals for reform and mitigation of the American system of criminal justice. We could parse them. But that would not be an answer to the theme of my essay — that governing is about more than solving technical problems. It's about expressing what we Americans stand for, as a people.
