In Britain there is more emphasis on controlling the non-perpetrators than the perpetrators. If a person defends himself inappropriately, he will be jailed for up to life. If a person defends his property, there is no “appropriate” defense and again the victim, the property defender, is jailed. The police should handle these things; but the police are inefficient and unarmed to the point of complete emasculinization. These points are not new, except in their deviation from British law from a century ago.
What is new is the entitlement generations that have grown up in western nations. Entitlement cultures have led to the breakdown of the family, the disappearance of father figures, and the expectation of government support regardless of any effort at self-improvement or contribution in return. Entitlement is a dangerous thing. It leads to the expectation of equality without effort, and in the case of Leftist society, the equality is to that of the hated rich who are railed against constantly. So there is no reason not to speed up the egalitarian process by just taking what you want: it is a natural extension of entitlement; in that worldview it is entirely rational.
Combining these two situations, the impotence of the state against anyone other than the peaceful, and the entitlement of idle, rootless youth, the warfare seen in Britain is a natural outcome. Even the manner in which the warfare is executed could be predicted: the youths using Blackberries calling mobs together for attacks on merchants and homeowners, and the police unable to respond except after the fact, and then charging property defenders with the crime of property defense.
The war is entirely unsymmetrical in favor of the feral children, with the productive citizens left bereft and fuming in their wake. It is an unsymmetrical war of both numbers and regulations which favor the feral children including the inability of unarmed authorities to engage their mobs even with water cannons, which might put out the feral’s torches and possibly cause them to fall and scrape an elbow.
It is a disgusting display of Leftist principles which excuse the criminals because they are not responsible for the problems of their social position: society is responsible and has not given them enough. But there is never enough, it would seem: the ferals are wearing expensive clothing and bearing modern electronics which they use to co-ordinate their flash attacks. They are not emaciated victims. They are merely entitled to their idleness, their lack of educational drive and hence their lack of marketable skills, and their ultimate irascibility. The poor dears don’t have a chance and are entitled to, well, to more of everything. So they are taking it.
Such wars are an obscenity on civilization. If there is to be any non-symmetry, it should not be in the favor of the barbarians we create with entitlements. There should not be any entitlements. There should be benefits that are accompanied by responsibilities, such as to get an education, at least to the point that one is employable and productive. This is no longer an entitlement, it is a system of action / consequence, one of cause and effect. The idea of entitlement is that one gets without giving, consequence without any attached action, an effect without a corresponding cause. So the consequence has no measurable limit since it is not measured against a comparable requirement of action from the entitled recipient. A consequence of this nature, then, is unlimited, at least in the expectation of the entitled.
According to Leftist cant however, no action is required for enabling entitlement: society caused the problem and the recipient has no responsibility in the matter. Thus the Leftist method of non-symmetrical gifting without any responsible action in return results in the expected: non-symmetrical expectations from the entitled.
We will undoubtedly hear about how more gifting of one type or another is the answer, that more gifting to banks for more jobs, or more gifting to increase entitlement programs, or more gifting for direct payment to the entitled, that these burdens on the peaceful, productive members of society are required in order to pacify the feral indigent children.
It’s virtually guaranteed.
4 comments:
Hello Stan,
Long time I haven't visited but always a pleasure to read the site and comments.
With regard to your post there is an article here which might interest you.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_2_oh_to_be.html
A word of warning, it makes for gruesome reading. Yet perhaps more chilling than the depravity described therein is the description of the attitudes and actions (or lack thereof) of the institutions of the British state at nearly all levels. The interesting part is the author's analysis of the political and ideological underpinnings of this state of affairs.
Of course, you will notice the article was written in 1996 about events taking place in the three decades before that, but the author's descriptions and conclusions remain true to this day as witnessed by the recent events in London and other large urban centers in England.
By the way, with regard to the events in London (I lived there for 15 years but recently, wisely it seems, moved to Oxfordshire), I couldn't help but think of the context in which the riots, and especially the looting, took place.
We have a financial 'services' sector who through greed, stupidity and sheer hubris nearly brought the economies of the western world to their knees and who yet showed little or no contrition when confronted with their deeds. None of the cuplrits saw jail time and certainly nor did any of their personal bank accounts take any hits. These persons later on felt it perfectly fair and reasonable to award themselves huge bonus packages even though the British state (i.e. the British tax payer) was now their majority shareholder and quite broke as it is. The bankers' response to which the politicians caved immediately: if we don't get our bonuses we'll move elsewhere. In other words, they bullied and extorted out of the tax-paying public huge sums of money on a threat. If that isn't a form of thuggery and looting I don't know what is.
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cont'd...
We also had the finances scandal of Members of Parliament who it turned out were fiddling their expenses and defrauding the public of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Yes, some MPs went to jail or payed back some of the money, but the message was clear: steal from the state (not to mention betray the trust of the people) and, at worst, you'll get a slap on the wrist.
And, just a week before the riots we had the unravelling spectacle of News International hacking the phones and voice mails of people, at first celebrities but then of the families of victims of brutal crimes and in the worst instance the phone of a 13 year old girl, Milly Dowler, abducted and murdered on her way home from school. There is evidence to suggest News Corp has done the same in the U.S.
Rupert Murdoch and his son showed up and in front of a committee of MPs, made a long sad face and assured people they had no knowledge of any phone hacking, something which only the most intensely naive person could believe. It has now emerged that Murdochs jr and sr knew about the hacking and much more, yet one gets the distinct feeling not much will happen to him nor his media empire. He is, in a sense, beyond the law of any one nation.
There are many other instances of this sort of thing, both large and small, which I'm sure you can think of.
While none of this excuses the thuggery and looting that took place, it certainly puts it in the context of a larger seeming total absence of morality of any sort in all levels and segments of society. The feral children see the rich and privileged can get away with crimes so they think why not them? What's the big deal? What's the difference?
In my view, the problem goes far beyond the leftist policies of endless entitlements for the poor. There is a moral rot - an emptiness - in this society that stretches from top to bottom, reaching far and wide, from the personal to the professional, to the political, the educational, the cultural and all the rest; the root of all this, in my opinion, being the gradual creeping hold of atheism on all segments of society starting from its roots in the highest levels of academe in the late 60s and 70s and gradually out and down to all levels thereon. It has finally reached the lowest rungs and expressed itself in the mindless violence and petty greed of the riots. Yet, in truth, the problem is everywhere and has been going on for far longer and is far more entrenched. It will certainly take more than 'tough policing' and whatever other knee-jerk remedies the British gov't is offering to undo something so profound and destructive as the belief of what you call rejectionism.
Fred,
Reading your comments I was tempted to turn them into a post unto itself. Thanks so much for taking the time to write, I truly appreciate it.
My pleasure, Stan. Nice to hear someone appreciates my rants!
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