Welcome to the new week. Today is Monday, March 9, 2026. It is St Francis of Rome’s Feast Day, and it’s also Commonwealth Day in Canada. Another warmer day here at the Florack Shack. Nice to not have the heater running all the time, but in a month or less I’ll be powering up the AC, (Shrug)
1776: Adam Smith publishes the influential economics book The Wealth of Nations.
1935: Adolf Hitler publicly announces the creation of a new air force, the Luftwaffe.
1942: Construction of the Alaska Highway begins.
1950: Willie Sutton robs Manufacturers Bank of $64,000.
1953: Joseph Stalin’s funeral takes place in Moscow after four days of national mourning.
1959: Barbie makes her debut at the American Toy Fair in New York; over a billion have been sold worldwide since.
1963: The Beatles began a British tour, supporting Tommy Roe and Chris Montez.
1964: First Ford Mustang produced.
Birthdays today include: Leland Stanford (Southern Pacific Railroad and Stanford University founder), Russian politician Vyacheslav Molotov, Ornette Coleman, Lloyd Price, Yuri Gagarin, Mickey Gilley, Robin Trower, and Jeffrey Osborne. If today is also your day, Happy Birthday.
* * *
To open today’s discussion, I offer a note from Arthur MacWaters on X:
Let me get this straight:
> literally 60+% of people in prison have already been arrested more than 3x already
> data very obviously shows that violent criminals will commit repeat offenses
> soft on crime DAs and judges are truly co-signing future death and destruction when… https://t.co/ZCb033Ni2q pic.twitter.com/p6dmaZ5dh9
— Arthur MacWaters (@ArthurMacwaters) March 7, 2026
I’m old enough to remember a “three strikes” law.
Oh, right. Leftists removed it with the argument that there was a disproportionate impact on their voters. The claim is that such laws disproportionately impact black and Latino defendants. Apparently, such defendants’ crimes are less impactful than those of other races. That argument is the very embodiment of racism if you ask me. Right off, the argument tends to strip bare the claim from the left that they actually care about crime, per se. They are, in fact, USING crime for political gain. Guess who benefits at the voting booth, in the short term, for being soft on crimes that black and Latino defendants commit?
The problem of repeat offenders goes unsolved, with many violent recidivists having thirty and forty arrests for various, often serious crimes, without seeing any jail time, or in the case of illegal aliens, deportations. And a sane society dwindles.
As I have often said, the worst thing you can do to a politician is actually solve a problem, because once you do, you’ve eliminated their ability to demagogue the situation. (By the way, I’ve got to add that to “Eric’s Axioms Part 2,” which is currently on my project list.)
The thing is that for the rest of us, who are not criminally inclined, a kind of Stockholm syndrome comes into play on this. There was a huge, years-long experiment some years ago, back in the late ‘40s up to and including the mid ‘60s, I think, by a scientist by the name of John Calhoun. He actually repeated the experiment from 1968 to 1972. Same results. This experiment came mostly out of the push for zero population growth.
I’m reconstructing a lot of this from memory, so some of the specifics might be a bit fuzzy, but here’s the general idea: Calhoun and his band of scientists took a large number of rodents and placed them in a large and accommodating (for mice) environment. Unlimited food and water. He called it a “mouse utopia.”
After a time, he started shrinking the large area into ever smaller areas over a period of months. Well, mouse society started breaking down. Violence erupted. All kinds of problems in the mouse society popped up. It started getting bloody. The more the rodents were packed in, the worse it got. Calhoun described the results this way:
Many [female mice] were unable to carry the pregnancy to full term or to survive delivery of their litters if they did. An even greater number, after successfully giving birth, fell short in their maternal functions. Among the males the behavior disturbances ranged from sexual deviation to cannibalism and from frenetic overactivity to a pathological withdrawal from which individuals would emerge to eat, drink and move about only when other members of the community were asleep. The social organization of the animals showed equal disruption.
I suppose most would look at those results and blame it solely on population density. There is some logic in that conclusion. But then, an interesting twist; The scientists started re-opening the living space, over the same time frame that they shrank them in, months before. The mice ignored the added space, which was less crowded, and continued living in the formerly tightly controlled spaces, even without the blocking of access to better areas. Apparently, once they had a taste for the higher tension, more dangerous life, they didn’t want to give it up, and went out of their way to stay in the more crowded areas, despite or perhaps because of all the problems associated with the higher population density.
Some smaller percentages of the mice simply withdrew from social activity altogether. This connection, in my own view, is actually the most chilling and underused part of the story. Calhoun called the animals who withdrew from normal social life “the beautiful ones” — they were physically pristine, groomed perfectly, but completely disengaged from reproduction, community, or survival behaviors. They ate, slept, and existed. That was about it. The rest? They kept up with the often-violent behaviors I’ve described.
I look at people in places like New York City and Chicago, Los Angeles, and so on, mostly voting Democrat, the same people who have been so soft on crime, and wonder if we aren’t seeing the mouse experiment being played out in large format. You see, living in the big city doesn’t have the same level of tension if you eliminate the crime.
Most people would find this a problem. Long-time city dwellers, on the other hand, have come to accept the behavior as simply part of city life. They shrug and go about their lives as if it wasn’t their concern until they get mugged, carjacked, or killed outright. I point out that the results and conclusions surrounding this experiment, which was in reality Calhoun’s life’s work, have been debated since he started his research.
We could solve a good deal of the problems with the higher crime rates if we stuck to the three-strikes rule. But we won’t. That would subject us to the charge of “racism.” As bogus as the charge is, in today’s society, it would stick. Thus, everybody suffers.
Thought for the day: There’s a secret to staying young: Lie about your age.
I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Take care.
We live in dangerous times. That’s why it’s important for you to become a PJ Media VIP member. Not only do you support the reporters and writers who support YOU, but you also get 60% off the regular price by going to this link and using the promo code FIGHT.
