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When teenage thugs are called “troubled youth” by people on the political  left, that tells us more about the mindset of the left than about these young  hoodlums.

Seldom is there a speck of evidence that the thugs are troubled, and often  there is ample evidence they are in fact enjoying themselves, as they create  trouble and dangers for others.

At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid  facing the plain fact of evil – that some people simply choose to do things that  they know to be wrong when they do them. Every kind of excuse, from poverty to  an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain and excuse evil.

All the people who have come out of poverty or unhappy childhoods, or both,  and become decent and productive human beings are ignored. So are the evils  committed by people raised in wealth and privilege, including kings, conquerors  and slaveowners.

Why has evil been such a hard concept for many on the left to accept? The  basic agenda of the left is to change external conditions. But what if the  problem is internal? What if the real problem is the cussedness of human  beings?

Rousseau denied this in the 18th century, and the left has been denying it  ever since. Why? Self-preservation.

If the things the left wants to control – institutions and government policy  – are not the most important factors in the world’s problems, then what role is  there for the left?

What if it is things like the family, the culture and the traditions that  make a more positive difference than the bright new government “solutions” the  left is constantly coming up with? What if seeking “the root causes of crime” is  not nearly as effective as locking up criminals? The hard facts show that the  murder rate was going down for decades under the old traditional practices so  disdained by the left intelligentsia, before the bright new ideas of the left  went into effect in the 1960s – after which crime and violence skyrocketed.

What happened when old-fashioned ideas about sex were replaced in the 1960s  by the bright new ideas of the left that were introduced into the schools as  “sex education” that was supposed to reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually  transmitted diseases?

Both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases had been going down  for years. But that trend suddenly reversed in the 1960s and hit new highs.

One of the oldest and most dogmatic of the crusades of the left has been  disarmament, both of individuals and of nations. Again, the focus of the left  has been on the externals – the weapons in this case.

If weapons were the problem, then gun control laws at home and international  disarmament agreements abroad might be the answer. But if evil people who care  no more for laws or treaties than they do for other people’s lives are the  problem, then disarmament means making decent, law-abiding people more  vulnerable to evil people.

Since belief in disarmament has been a major feature of the left since the  18th century, in countries around the world, you might think that by now there  would be lots of evidence to substantiate their beliefs.

But evidence on whether gun control laws actually reduce crime rates in  general, or murder rates in particular, is seldom mentioned by gun control  advocates. It is just assumed in passing that of course tighter gun control laws  will reduce murders.

But the hard facts do not back up that assumption. That is why it is the  critics of gun control who rely heavily on empirical evidence, as in books like  “More  Guns, Less Crime” by John Lott and “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee  Malcolm.

National disarmament has an even worse record. Both Britain and America  neglected their military forces between the two World Wars, while Germany and  Japan armed to the teeth. Many British and American soldiers paid with their  lives for their countries’ initially inadequate military equipment in World War  II.

But what are mere facts compared to the heady vision of the left?