Peggy Noonan’s self-fulfilling worldview

August 10, 2005

The New Republic’s Ben Adler had the patience to trudge through Peggy Noonan’s recent Wall Street Journal column, in which the former Reagan speechwriter described her recent trip to West Virginia. Adler found one section of Noonan’s piece that jumped out.

Three hours into our drive west, a police car drove by, and someone mentioned that was the first one he’d seen since we crossed the state line. Someone else said, approvingly, “Everyone keeps a gun in West Virginia. Crime is low.” Later I would be told it has the lowest violent crime per capita in the United States. It is very nice, when traveling, to see your beliefs and assumptions statistically borne out.

First of all, as the FBI reported, West Virginia does not have the lowest per capita crime rate. Noonan was “told” this and decided the claim was good enough for publication in the Wall Street Journal.

Second, and more importantly, is Adler’s analysis of Noonan’s other point about having one’s beliefs borne out by allegedly accurate data.

This speaks to the way conservatives approach evidence. Rather than looking at the statistics and basing policies on what they see, they make assumptions and cling to beliefs and then look for statistics to support them. This backwards empiricism characterizes everything from supply-side economics to the Bush administration’s selective use of intelligence to make the case for the Iraq war, and, as Noonan has now so helpfully pointed out, apparently crime and gun control, too.

It’s funny, I’ve often assumed Noonan was rather unhinged. After she blamed Mark Felt for genocide in Cambodia, argued during the Schiavo controversy that liberals “seem to have fallen half in love with death,” and suggested that God sent dolphins to rescue Elian Gonzales in 2000, I was told that Noonan was one of the nuttier conservatives to be published in the country.

It is very nice, when reading, to see your beliefs and assumptions borne out in print.

I’m curious, does anyone take Noonan seriously anymore? Other than the publications that pay her for some reason?

  • Just for a hoot, I went to the FBI report and did some calculations for myself. As it turns out, the three states with the lowest rates of “violent crime” per 100,000 residents are as follows:

    3. West Virginia 2.443
    2. Vermont 2.290
    1. Massachusetts 2.192

    There you go. That’s right. The two states with arguably the most “liberal” and progressive laws in the land, especially with protections for and rights provided to gays, ALSO have the lowest rates of violent crime in the land, too. Coincidence? Methinks not, but that instead there IS a direct correlation between the two.

    Disclaimer: These are MY calculations only, and I may have missed something in the methodogy used by the FBI in compiling the statistics for its report. But I offer this for what it’s worth!

  • I love the phrase “backwards empiricism”. It does capture the Bush Crime Family’s approach to science: Facts are things which accord with my world view, feed my greed, destroy my opponents, etc. CB sums it up even tighter with “bubble”.

  • AL,

    I haven’t checked your calculations, but one of things which first occurred to me about that West Virginia “fact” was: Why would anyone commit crime in West Virginia anyway? They’re poverty-stricken to there’s nothing to steal, there’s nowhere to hide (except in coal mines), and they’re all related to one another in the first place. Not much opportunity for white-collar crime either.

  • As a former West Virginian, I remember a time that it was true that WV had the lowest crime rate in the country. I don’t think that has been the case since the early ’90s, though. It’s not surprising that a West Virginian would say that to Peggy, because it was fairly common knowledge and a point of pride back in the day.

    I always figured the relative absence of violent crime was pretty much a function of the state being almost entirely rural–there isn’t much street crime because there aren’t many streets.

    The firearms thing makes a good argument for both sides of the gun control debate. The populace is armed to the teeth, and there isn’t much street crime, but oh, the things that happen with guns in the parking lot of the beer joint or inside the confines of a double-wide. One of my female classmates got shot dead that way. My brother put it pretty succinctly: “The only way you’re going to get murdered in West Virginia is if you have a crazy husband or you fuck someone who does.”

  • Ed, I know it’s early but your comment about stereotypic West Virginia is disappointing. Are you unaware of the relationship between poverty and crime, that much violent crime is internecine (or domestic) and that West Virginia is a mountainous, heavily wooded state? I won’t comment on your insinuation about inbreeding. I don’t know why crime is low there but I doubt it’s for the reasons you cite.

  • In the tradition of “Rick ‘Man on Dog’ Santorum”, shouldn’t Noonan forevermore be introduced as “Peggy ‘Magical Dolphins’ Noonan”?

  • OOhhhhhhh, CB, you’ve got me seeing stars. First you wack me with that, dense as a black hole, Kenneth Tomlinson right; and then you finish me off with the perfectly timed Peggy Noonan haymaker from the left.

    So much blind-a$$ stupidity so early in the morning has got me reeling.

    ‘Scuse me, I’ve got to stagger off to work.

    Dang, that hurts. Why’d ya do that?

  • Ed,

    Good point, but I’m not sure that there is a direct correlation to other poverty-stricken states. The most eye-opening example is Mississippi with a rate of 7.306 per 100,000, while Wyoming clocks in at 6.914 and Arkansas at 6.723 — yet South Carolina at only 3.282. Certainly I would suspect that the economic circumstances are roughly equal in West Virginia and Mississippi, yet their violent crime rates are vastly different.

    So, while I agree that too many states — and geographic areas within yet other states — may not have a lot that might be a target for crime, the stats that I have focused on are with respect to “violent crime,” which the FBI defines to include only murder, forcible rape, robbery (i.e., directly from a person, e.g., “mugging”), and aggravated assault.

    In other words, these are primarily crimes against one’s physical body rather than against property. Indeed, the FBI has a separate category for “Property crimes” — defined by the FBI to include only burglary (i.e, from a car or a building), larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson — are and I did not include them in my calculations set forth here and in Comment # 2 above regarding “violent crime.”

    Again, I submit — without doing a whole lot of empirical and academic-quality research to support it — that the differences in violent crime rates have a lot more to do with the economic and social values in particular states and communities than do with whether a particular community/state is a “target-rich” environment for those bent on commiting violent crimes.

    Again, for what it’s worth…

  • Is there a direct correlation between level of police presence as measured by anecdotal visibility and level of crime? Perhaps because of budget cuts they just can’t afford to have a whole of police, reardless of the crime rate….

  • AL and Ed–
    Since Napoleon first collected crime data back in the early 1800s, researchers have found that poorer areas tend to have much higher violent crime rates than wealthier areas. Researchers do not agree on why, alas. One explanation is that wealthier areas tend to have more worth stealing (and that poorer folks tend to do most of the stealing regardless of geographic locale). Another is what AL mentioned: a different culture (sometimes called the “Southern subculture of violence”).

    One thing to bear in mind: our best data for looking at geographic variation come from official arrest statistics. It’s possible that the alleged higher crime rate in the South simply reflects different police practices. I’d suggest focusing on homicide, which tends to be pretty well measured, and ignoring the rest.

    Andy, the police are actually irrelevant to crime rates. Or, at least, I know of no empirical research to support a connection and lots to question it. And just think about it: how many seconds per day do you spend in the presence of a police officer, and how many more police would we need to enjoy 10 more seconds per day?

  • I wrote: “the police are actually irrelevant to crime rates.”

    Gaahhh. I mean “real” crime rates, not those the police report to the FBI to construct our official crime rates.

  • I agree with virtually all this (and apologize if my remarks were over the top). There is a “culture of violence” associated with the south (long term). And there do tend to be lower crime rates in rural areas (complicated by more family violence, often unreported). Under all this is the notorious inadequacy of virtually all crime statistics. It’s one reason why, though there are mountains of numbers to play with (and I loved crunching them), I avoided crime data for most of my academic career (except in the very broadest of terms, like the increasing numbers of prisoners in our society).

  • Now thats funny, what a maroon. I think that America is getting sick and tired of being told that the Sun doth Shine at Midnight, the economy, jobs, the war, etc.

  • Peggy Noonan has always been a gifted writer. But she’s always been a victim of her own fantasies as well. She worshipped Reagan — specifically, his speaking skills. When she discovered, personally, that Reagan had no real interest in live people, the fact that he was an “empty suit” didn’t seem to give her pause.

    Noonan’s (and Reagan’s) imagined America was always a fantasyland.

  • The linked FBI report in the main entry is for arrests. The more appropriate data for crimes reported are at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_03/pdf/03sec2.pdf. See specifically Table 5 under Offense Tabulations. West Virginia is fairly low at 257.5 reports of violent crimes per 100,000 residents, but North Dakota is lowest at a rate of 77.8 per 100k (in 2003).

  • AL – Your decimals are off. You’re showing crimes
    per 1000, not per 100,000.

    Doesn’t everyone in Texas have a gun? For
    the year 2000, they come in with an overall
    crime rate ranking 9th highest, and a violent
    crime rate of 545.05 per 100,000. Only
    California had more murders.

    On average, the violent crime rate is about
    10% of the overall crime rate, but it varies
    considerably by state. The vast majority
    of violent crimes are robbery and aggravated
    assault.

    It would be interesting to know what the
    statistical correlation is between the
    “packing rates” and the violent and overall
    crime rates of the states. You’d think
    someone would have done such a definitive
    study, just to settle the question once and
    for all.

  • hark,

    OOPS! You’re right; thanks for the catch. But the principle and thrust of my comments remain unaffected (since I made the same lunk-headed mistake on ALL of the calculations!).

  • Doesn’t violent crime correlate to age? According to the census WV is older and slightly more female than the rest of the USA. Also very white (95%) with a 75% homeownership rate. Not the kind of mix that would lead to a high violent crime rate. Also no cities of any size.

  • AL – yes, it was just a technical glitch, and
    the gist of what you said is correct.

    uptown – all those variables affect crime rates.
    Probably hundreds of different factors
    altogether. As usual, the Repugs only care
    about about catapulting the propaganda,
    however.

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