The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. (Dalrymple - City Journal)Keynesianism and its attendant government-planned economies has failed, as has the flim flam known as monetarism.
Dimwitted governments are looking to crack down on social networking, when they should be cracking down on socially unacceptable behavior by refusing to reward it with cash prizes, free housing and gang hangouts euphemistically known as community centers.
Taking a Good Idea Too Far
We put child abuse laws on the books, a good thing. The downside of this is that the definition of physical abuse has now expanded to the point a teacher may not even touch a student and a parental spanking that leaves no marks can bring down the wrath of Social Services upon good parents.
A guy called in to a morning radio show and commented that it is a sick joke to think kids are tougher than adults. He recalled that when he was a kid most men were military veterans and they would jerk a kid back in line if things started getting out of hand. Not anymore
Teaching the Wrong Lessons
Government has taught people that they have a right to the property of others, legally confiscated, and we are now suffering the consequences.
I'm reading commentary from relatively liberal columnists, and I think we may end up seeing some Burkean conversions, at least as it applies to law and order.
Liberal Dogma …Amoral Youngsters
Less Political Rebellion, More Mollycoddled Mob
Riots for Rioting’s Sake
You can read any of these rioting and looting stories and just as easily apply the same lawless actions to the banking industry. Same blind government enablers, same immorality, same theft, same result.
24 comments:
I don't find it plausible that the looters are unaware that stealing is wrong.
I find it more plausible that the looters consider productive members of society, those running the businesses they looted, to be outside their moral circle.
I see it as smashing up their own neighbourhood. That's not how they see it -- they smashed up the "rich peoples'" neighbourhood which overlaps geographically, but not politically, with theirs.
We need to make sure that we are inside their moral circle, and they in ours. We have to punish theft and violence first, but once that's done, the police needs to be a service they can use, not an enemy by default. I've broken the law from time to time, but if my house was burgled I'd call the cops; I'm not sure they would. That's a huge difference.
I think the most important thing you mentioned, Silver, was the notion that Liberals/Porgressives ignore a lot about human nature.
Loosely quoting some words from "Network," how can we look at this slaughterhouse of a world and say that "man is a noble creature"?
So true Jack. We know that man is capable of noble acts, but he is also capable of the most debased acts and extreme cruelty.
Systems of morality didn't spring up at every age and in every culture just for the fun of it.
"I'm reading commentary from relatively liberal columnists, and I think we may end up seeing some Burkean conversions, at least as it applies to law and order."
Yes, SF...when it 'hits home' and OUR homes and communities might be under fire (figuratively or literally), people change, get more protective, don't they.
It's like 9/11...suddenly libs like Evan Sayet, Dennis Miller, David Mamet, etc etc., became conservatives. "Wait, this is happening to OUR COUNTRY, MY family now..."
Your line about teachers not touching children strikes me deep as I teach a class called WEE AMERICANS at a local Christian preschool nearby...it's a class where I teach about American patriots and inventors.......I had a 4 year old ask her mother "was Babe Ruth as good as Jackie ROBINSON?" at a Starbucks once while her mother and her friend were talking about The Babe and baseball......when the mother told me (in shock that her child had ever heard Jackie Robinson's NAME,) I was thrilled...
Anyway, I can hug those children because it's a private school and I see such amazing sweetness from that..such bonding when I see the other teachers hugging to console, to show affection, to create TRUST.
We've abolished TRUST in our country because a few perverts can't be trusted.....in schools, with corporations, etc etc......can we fix that? The Right, I believe, can rise above and blame and punish the pervert or the corporation which screws its stockholders or employees, but the Left seems to always want to legislate the pervert and corporate bad guy out of existence, as if one can change human nature with a law; I don't think it works and I think it even makes things much worse. ?
I disagree. I see this as a "Ring of Gyges" crime of opportunity, of finding "anonymity" in a mob and thinking you can thereby get away with anything (like trolling someone else's more popular website with your own crazy ideas).... ;)
Plato, "Republic"
Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges, the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this.
anonymity is a vital ingredient of any mob action.
Not a word for consumerism and the most insidious force of the second half of the last century, blitz advertising.
Do we live in the same world.
You read like a preacher trying to make sure the congregation never looks past the accepted dogma.
"jez said...
anonymity is a vital ingredient of any mob action."
Except that they're rounding them up in Britain by the hundreds thanks to the huge amount of cameras around the city, huh?
Ducky..are you blaming "a right to the property of others" on consumerism?
Dimwitted governments are looking to crack down on social networking, when they should be cracking down on socially unacceptable behavior by refusing to reward it with cash prizes, free housing and gang hangouts euphemistically known as community centers.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
OH, gad, AOW, what an amazingly cogent sentence; we'd better wake up; banning Tweeting is not the answer. And that's what Cameron's contemplating today, as you obviously know.
Talk about 'free housing and gangs and community centers..'..I learned about this while living in Paris; There are very wealthy Muslims there who live exemplary, upstanding lives and contribute to the culture and the economy; Sadly, they're vastly overshadowed by the poor Muslims who are literally GIVEN places to live, buildings built for them, and villages created........until 2 years or so goes by and they've made that housing a TOTAL UNLIVABLE SLUM, and the baker and candle stick maker (and police) have had to close down and run for their lives. Cars are burned EVERY SINGLE NIGHT outside Paris, yet our media makes it a BIG deal when cars in Paris burn as if it's a new phenomena (and caused by the horrible French who never give Muslims anything....but homes, cars, communities to destroy and then complain about again, of course). Realities difficult to grasp by some...
They're there to take advantage and destroy ... not do the best they can, appreciate what's given to them FREE, and live their lives.
"A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice"
As like the theft and destruction in London, so goes it in some of our Cities here in the US. Flash Mobs come to mind.
The thought they were anonymous, and that's sufficient.
Ducky: you think exposure to advertising explains riots?
There is no cure for STUPID, Silver, but if we have the will, there is a cure for ignorance.
Speedy:
Your theory is sound, and it does not conflict with mine. Also, I've been hearing that spoiled little rich brats were taking part as well, which is not surprising.
Anyone who thinks the rich are more virtuous than the rest of us hasn't been paying attention.
Ducky:
There are literally hundreds of ills I could talk about, but I see manipulation of money and Keynesianism as root causes.
Hard money and no fractional banking means no monetary expansion and no easy credit.
Without those there would be no blitz advertising (whatever that is) and no rampant consumerism.
I strongly disagree with your dogma comment.
I am anything but dogmatic, readily acknowledging that I don't know everything and that I am uneasily straddling libertarianism and conservatism, which are often in opposition to one another.
I also welcome comments from others like you who disagree with me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
No z, I am simply stating that when this consumerist crap hole you've built is operating it can reduce personal identity to nothing but acquisition and absent the means or the hope for the means you are going to see these eruptions.
Get used to it. They'll be pulling the ladies who lunch out of their cars next.
Behold your creation.
Ducky: Conservatives didn't create these feral wards of the state.
Well Silverfiddle, if it isn't dogma you don't seem to ever admit doubt.
Now even a leftist will admit that Hayek's belief on the market to create pricing has to be taken very seriously.
A leftist may look for the basis of the social contract in Locke (and we seem to agree there) but there is absolutely no evidence you have moved outside your comfort zone.
Polanyi, Marx, Veblen, Schumpeter ... it' as if they never existed in your world.
Marx is a waste of time, his dialectic is a cheap mashup of Aristotle and Hegel. His valuation of products has been completely discredited.
I've read a little of Schumpeter's creative destruction. Haven't heard of the other guys.
I am a working man with a family, so I don't have a lot of reading time, so I have to be picky. Right now, I'm reading Stanley Jevons' Logic and Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty.
And I most certainly admit doubt. For crying out loud, if I knew it all I'd be a billionaire (and an insufferable one to boot.)
I have actually changed my thinking thanks to delving into "lefty" issues. I completely discounted crony capitalism just a few years ago, and completely trusted the fed. I have also come to view corporations with suspicion, but not from marxist motives like the lefties do.
Also, through personal experience, I've become anti-war unless we no shit are really threatened.
Consumerism now. LOL. ducky should just blame George Bush and be done with it. We all know that's what he really wants to say.
"...(because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts..."
I wonder if that intellectual class feels like it's been slapped in the face. After years of coddling these ratbags, giving them lots of crap via welfare and blaming everyone else except the ratbags for their problems, they never once said thank you to these intellectuals and elites. If i was one of them i'd really be pissed off at the lack of gratitude.
I know some of them are still willing to blame nonsense like consumerism and what not, but i'm sure a few of them are at least a bit peeved. How can you not be, seeing them helping that Asian fellow to his feet and then robbing him. Consumerism to blame for mowing down those muslims protecting their mosque? Come on, must it always be America, capitalism and/or anything else.
The best possible protection against shoddy goods, meretricious merchandise and cultural contamination would be to educate consumers so as to enable them to appreciate the difference between real and counterfeit, gaudy and glorious, trendy trash and items of solid enduring value, the wasteful and the economical, the fine and the false, etc.
If children were as indoctrinated in matters of elevated taste and cultural discernment as they are steeped in anti-American revisionist history, race-baiting shibboleths, sex-education, and anti-Capitalist propaganda, the world would soon straighten up and fly right.
The influence of Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll has been so profoundly deleterious to the health and vitality of society there aren't words to describe it adequately.
It's the KULTCHAH, stupid. The KULTCHAH!
~ FreeThinke
And Jez,
For CHRIST's sake stop inventing one air-headed rationale after another for unacceptable behavior.
Get out and create a constructive alternative to the lifestyle that turns human beings into noxious detritus.
Don't feed them. Don't house them. Don't give them money. Give them something to DO that needs doing, ride herd on them and make sure they perform their new duties sedulously, then reward them according to the merits of their performance.
People need clear-cut boundaries, lots of direction, and unlimited amounts of tough love. Nothing makes a person feel better about himself than learning how to do something really well, then being given a reason to do it repeatedly. Doesn't matter what it is as long as it has nothing to do with Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll.
~ FreeThinke
You have to give him credit for use of the 'circle' FreeThinke, it sounds sort of warm, inclusive and feminine. Could have been worse you know, could have been a square or a triangle or.... hope you're sitting down.... the dreaded rectangle. LOL.
We have a women's program here called 'the circle', modeled after the view in America though the women are nowhere near as good looking as the token conservative on the view. Bunch of women get together everyday and talk about their feelings, womens issues and how they all have nightmares that Sarah Palin will kick down their door and prosecute them for fornicating without a license!
FT, you misread me. I don't think riotting is correct, but I also don't think it's a waste of time to investigate why riots happen.
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