It is important, therefore, that we work together in combating organized crime in all its forms. We must use our courts and our law enforcement agencies, and the moral forces of our people, to put down organized crime wherever it appears.

At the same time, we must aid and encourage gentler forces to do their work of prevention and cure. These forces include education, religion, and home training, family and child guidance, and wholesome recreation.

The most important business in this Nation--or any other nation, for that matter-is raising and training children. If those children have the proper environment at home, and educationally, very, very few of them ever turn out wrong. I don't think we put enough stress on the necessity of implanting in the child's mind the moral code under which we live.

The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days.

If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state.

Above all, we must recognize that human misery breeds most of our crime. We must wipe out our slums, improve the health of our citizens, and eliminate the inequalities of opportunity which embitter men and women and turn them toward lawlessness. In the long run, these programs represent the greatest of all anticrime measures.

And I want to emphasize, particularly, equality of opportunity. I think every child in the Nation, regardless of his race, creed, or color, should have the right to a proper education. And when he has finished that education, he ought to have the right in industry to fair treatment in employment. If he is able and willing to do the job, he ought to be given a chance to do that job, no matter what his religious connections are, or what his color is.

I am particularly anxious that we should do everything within our power to protect the minds and hearts of our children from the moral corruption that accompanies organized crime. Our children are our greatest resource, and our greatest asset--the hope of our future, and the future of the world. We must not permit the existence of conditions which cause our children to believe that crime is inevitable and normal. We must teach idealism--honor, ethics, decency, the moral law. We must teach that we should do right because it is right, and not in the hope of any material reward. That is what our moral code is based on: do to the other fellow as you would have him do to you. If we would continue that all through our lives, we wouldn't have organized crime--if everybody would do that.

Our local, State, and Federal law enforcement agencies have a major role to play in this whole task of crime suppression.

As law enforcement officers you have great powers. At the same time you must never forget that hand in hand with those powers go great responsibilities. You must make certain that these powers are not used for personal gain, or from any personal motive. Too often organized crime is made possible by corruption of law enforcement officials.

But, far more than that, we must always remember that you are officers of the law in a great democratic nation which owes its birth to the indignation of its citizens against the encroachment of police and governmental powers against their individual freedoms.

Now there isn't any difference, so far as I can see, in the manner in which totalitarian states treat individuals than there is in the racketeers' handling of these lawless rackets with which we are sometimes faced. And the reason that our Government is strong, and the greatest democracy in the world, is because we have a Bill of Rights.

myliit • June 5, 2020 6:30 PM

Our host in the making. From the OP.

“One of us (Bruce) remembers that as a child he once brute-forced a combination padlock in his house. A four-digit lock’s 10,000 possible combinations might be enough to keep out a burglar, but fail against a child with unlimited access and nothing better to do that day.”

Clive Robinson • June 6, 2020 7:00 AM
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/06/new_research_pr.html#c6812062

@ mylitt, Bruce, ALL,

"A four-digit lock’s 10,000 possible combinations might be enough to keep out a burglar, but fail against a child with unlimited access and nothing better to do that day."

They used to say that,

Necessity is the mother of invention.

However "Curiosity" is the fundamental reason we learn about our world.

I remember learning not only to undo combination locks by "feel" at an early age, but also how to pick simple bike locks and desk/cupboard locks with home made skeleton keys and later picks. And at some point learning again self taught how to do what is called in the profession "impressioning".

My parents used to tell other adults as a precautionary tale about "curiosity" of certain bad habits I had when younger than four, that I don't remember. Apparently my little fingers had learnt some technique for "worrying" nuts and bolts, such that given time I could undo them without the need of spanners etc and amongst other things had taken the bolts out of a set ot wooden step ladders much to my fathers anoyance when they fell appart on him one day.

However I think he was only briefly annoyed, because unlike my mother he actively encoraged my curiosity and tinkering. It occasionally went wrong like when I chopped the corner of my index finger off with a "Stanly knife" (modeling knife, like an up market box cutter). But it grew back so nothing real lost and a lesson learned... Which is not so much cutting yourself hurts, which it does, but it carries on hurting, then itching, and finally is to soft for half a year, which when you are eight is a very long time :-(

My curiosity with locks taught me not just to impression keys but how to cut keys on sight, which later gave rise to me about using photographs for cutting them. Which supprised our host Bruce when I first mentioned it, but then enabled us to all have a good laugh at the TSA for being idiots when they published a photograph of all the TSA approved luggage lock keys.

It's also enabled some as we now know to use 3D Printers to automate the process of key cutting...

But curiosity also leads to reading, and when young I read adventure books and graduated onto detective stories and SciFi. I worked out by accident when very young how to make fake finger prints. From a very early age I used to collect the red wax from Edam Cheese, it had some nice properties that whilst fairly solid at room temprature it became nicely soft at hand temprature if you "worked it". The problem was in working it your fingerprints showed up. The only way I had to get rid of them at the time was to roll the wax into a ball in the palms of my hands. A little while after that in junior school I got to play with "Copydex Glue" it was the "Pritstick" of it's day and considered to be unhalmfull to very young children. Also known as "Rubber Solution Glue" it had an anoying property when it dried on your hands it made a transparent layer like a second skin. As kids we quickly realised you could use it to make "fake wounds" to scare other kids with, and was as much fun as the "finger in the matchbox trick". At some point I realised that you could make a mould of somebodies finger print with the warm Edam Cheese wax and then paint Copydex in it to make "fake fingerprints" all good fun. But it was not untill I showed other kids how you could use a little light oil or grease (fat from cooking a chicken works) to actually leave a fingerprint on objects, that my brain suddenly realised just how powerfull it was in that you could also put the fake skin with finger print onto gloves and leave false evidence.

I thought it was "pretty neat" but some time later on when reading a Sherlock Holmes Story about a crooked builder who faked his own murder that it mentioned using a finger print impression used in a wax seal on the back of a letter to make a fake finger tip to leave a finger print in blood to frame a solicitor.

However it sparked a life long interest in "faking forensics" and later "faking biometrics" which has led me down all sorts of twisty little passages of science most will never have heard of...

So if you have young children that exhibit "curiosity" I'd encorage it a lot, they might not be rich and famous but they will I can assure you have more fun in life than many many others as you will open their minds "To a World of Wonder". They will also learn the important lesson in life that too many people make assumptions and get led astray by them and what are little more than simple parlor tricks. The fact the average person does not know something is possible, should not be taken to mean that something is impossible or even improbable if not actually very easy to do. Most "Guild Secrets" were kept not because they were special or clever but because they enabled Guild Members to profit substantially by others ignorance. The only difference today is we don't call them "Guild Secrets" any more at best "Trade Secrets" or by a slang such as "The Knowing", "Knowledge", etc.

The classic example of this "Guild/Trade" secret is "Hotel keys", where there is a "Hotel Master Key" that opens all doors, "Floor Masters" that open all doors on a floor for cleaners etc and "Suite Masters" where several rooms can be turned into a suite of rooms for more well healed guests with their own servants, assistants, or family. The myth sold by locksmiths is that such mechanical lock systems are "more secure" than ordinary locks and keys, when in fact they make the locks easier to pick etc... This myth also alows them to charge between five and ten times as much for each lock, and ten to twenty times as much for each key, compared to an equivalently secure lock from your local large DIY store.

Another politicians makes a claim about video games with no evidence. //

numerous studies have shown that there is no connection between violence and video games, and even some shows that video games tend to reduce violent urges in people who play them. These studies include:

A study by sociologist Whitney DeCamp and psychologist Christopher Ferguson of Western Michigan University.
A study by Dr. Andy Przybylski, from Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.
A study by Dr David Zendle at the University of York.
A study by Dr. Gregor Szycik of the Hannover Medical School
DeCamp’s study found that when it comes to gamers who do show violent tendencies, these tendencies were present before the person ever picked up a controller. According to DeCamp, the predisposition toward violence is usually a result of the condition of the home life. For instance, if the child witnesses violence within the home itself, then the child will resort to violence themselves more often.

“The parenting measures in my study were some of the bigger predictors,” DeCamp said. “The parental attachment between the youth and the parent, the monitoring activities of the parents—that is, whether the parents are aware of what the kids are doing—and parental enforcement of the rules were all strong predictors. Seeing or hearing violence in the home and experiencing violence in the home were also powerful predictors. So home life seems to matter more than just playing violent video games.”

Once again, we see that the real factor in a child’s behavior rests with the actions of the parents and not a third party. Once again, we see governmental figures dismissing that fact and seeking to elect themselves as the parent of, not just your child, but you.

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Marriage is the highest earthly calling for most people, so it is entirely appropriate for Christians to treat it as a normative aspiration. //

The problem here is with the presumption that marriage simply happens when the time and the romance are just right—creating a false dichotomy in which anything other than letting go and letting God comprises “force.”

Christians have taught that lie far too often, and the result has generally been loneliness and apostasy. The truth is rather that marriage needs to be deliberately pursued and prepared for. Those who are not called to celibacy need to make marriage a deliberate goal. They need to consider what skills would contribute to their future household and acquire them.

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