The liberal capacity for self-delusion knows no bounds as evidenced by the George Soros funded study that inspired John Lott's latest column,

According to a brand-new and extensively covered study by the JFA Institute, a George Soros funded group, the U.S. prison system doesn't deter crime and is "a costly and harmful failure."

Prison is supposedly so useless that the U.S. prison population could be cut in half with no effect on crime.

This distrust of prison reducing crime is not new, but many have a hard time believing the simplest rule of economics: if you make something more costly, people do less of it. People accept that this principle applies to what we buy in grocery stores, but not to "bad" things that people might do.

Now, John Lott took the time to methodically tear apart the idea that harsh prison sentences and strict policing don't reduce crime, but isn't it sort of pathetic that he had to take the time to do that?

The whole idea that handing out a long prison sentence for committing a crime won't reduce the number of people willing to commit that crime is so preposterous and so self-evidently incorrect that only a liberal or a college professor could believe it.

For example, if the penalty for speeding were increased to 10 years in jail starting tomorrow morning, do you think it's more likely, less likely, or just as likely that you'll speed tomorrow afternoon? Team Soros at the JFA Institute would probably tell you it wouldn't make any difference, but the rest of us know better.

PS: If you've ever wondered how the Left could ever believe communism would work or why they think that they can heap new taxes on the rich without seeing the wealthy change their behavior, etc., etc., this level of obliviousness to human nature explains it.