An honest liberal

Al-Jazeera

"over the past 200 years we liberals have, ironically, played a major role in ushering in an age of immuration."

     Clive Stafford Smith, "Prisoners of conscience," Times literary supplement no. 5940 (February 3 2017):  5 (3-5).
     Smith gives two examples:  an early 18th-century one, and a late 20th-century one in which he himself "played a relatively significant role":  Thus, "The quantum of misery that we achieved, albeit inadvertently, was almost unfathomable."  "my plan, back in 1984, can reasonably be said to have helped 100,000 additional people to find themselves condemned, perhaps for thirty-four years in prison—a grand total of 1.24 billion days of misery."
     "So here we are:  conservatives and liberals alike view the mass incarceration experiment as an expensive failure, and the legal system is simply not up to the task of sorting out who did what.  The result is increasing levels of desolation for millions.  We have some work ahead of us."