What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Watching London burn on the BBC video window. The reporter describes how the thugs hop out of the stores with arms full of electronic goods and stop, for sport, to clout an old lady. The reporter is almost beside himself with fury over these criminals, and the lack of any assistance from the police. Like this:
Burgess pegged these yobs fifty years ago in “Clockwork Orange”: the end product of a state that excuses everything with the warm bath of sociological bromides, divorces itself from its cultural antecedents, anesthetizes the lower classes with payouts and a meretricious culture, and finds itself stuffed to the gunwales with pleasure-seeking sociopaths addicted to a life of sensation, both personal - and usually meaningless - and vicarious, which only fuels resentment for those having a better quality of sensory fulfillment. Theodore Dalyrymple’s close-hand examination of the pathology of the underclass in “Life at the Bottom” warned everyone years ago what sort of culture Britain had produced, adding something Burgess didn’t anticipate: the elevation of the thug culture by the upper classes and the artistic set, keen to show they were “authentic” by aping the demotic.
Add to that a political class keen to excuse the enthusiasms of youths, if it fits into the dead progressive template. Tweeted an MP:
Reaping what has been sown over 3 decades of creating grotesquely unequal society,with alienated young copying ethos of looting bankers.
Three decades: back to Thatcher, of course, who ruined the fine, sturdy country that was paradise on earth, aside from the sclerotic economy, incessant strikes, and the general sense of sinking into the sea.
The churches are empty; the state is everywhere; the state is empowered to peer into every corner of your life and powerless to protect it; the brutes rule the night. Alfred the Butler got it half right in that “Batman” quote: yes, some people want to see the world burn. But others want to set it on fire.
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May '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Dalrymple, an atheist, basically confirms through his research everything the socons have been saying for decades.
Liberalism, primarily of the social kind, is what destroys a civilization from within, and paves the way for liberalism of the fiscal kind (i.e. socialism, statism) to take root. After that, they feed on each other.
Only a moral society with strong families and values is capable of self-government.
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 6:30amJan '11
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
The year 1968, the city Chicago.
The year 1968 was a momentous year for Daley. In April, Daley was castigated by many for his sharp rhetoric in the aftermath of rioting that took place after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Displeased with what he saw as an overly cautious police response to the rioting, Daley chastised police superintendent James B. Conlisk and subsequently related that conversation at a City Hall press conference as follows[9]:
"I said to him very emphatically and very definitely that an order be issued by him immediately to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand, because they're potential murderers, and to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting."......."The Mayor later backed away from his words in an address to the City Council, saying:
"It is the established policy of the police department – fully supported by this administration – that only the minimum force necessary be used by policemen in carrying out their duties."
Later that month, Daley asserted "There wasn't any shoot-to-kill order. That was a fabrication."
There were however many souls never seen again
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 6:38amMay '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Brilliant description. Brilliant indictment of where liberalism, godlessness and pop-trash culture take us.
Dec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Reaping what has been sown over 3 decades of creating grotesquely unequal society,with alienated young copying ethos of looting bankers.
This statement is an onion of stupidity and failed ideas. Fisking it would require more than 200 words. It's actually more of a deep-fried bloomin' onion with a sauce that bears a resemblance to a spicy thousand island dressing.
The currency of character is aspiration and the UK's welfare state has created a great many poor people over the generations.
Jun '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
I guess it's providential that Glenn Beck is a Mormon, because like him or not, the guy is kind of a "living prophet" when it comes to disasters:
From a year and a half ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7Yvd3cuY0
Jul '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
I don't think I could see this happening in Texas.
I could see it happen in California. Not in the interior of the state, but definitely on the coast.
The sad thing is that went you capitulate, to nation states, terrorists, or rabble rousing citizenry, you get run over.
Dec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Somewhere in the world Chuck Palahniuk is smiling.
Dec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Didn't Sublime provide a comprehensive sociological analysis of this phenomenon?
April 29, 1992 (Miami)
Dec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
John Davey: I don't think I could see this happening in Texas.
I could see it happen in California. Not in the interior of the state, but definitely on the coast.
The sad thing is that went you capitulate, to nation states, terrorists, or rabble rousing citizenry, you get run over. · Aug 8 at 9:55pm
Anyone remember the Rodney King riots?
Heck, anyone remember the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot?
Dec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Stuart Creque
John Davey: I don't think I could see this happening in Texas.
I could see it happen in California. Not in the interior of the state, but definitely on the coast.
The sad thing is that went you capitulate, to nation states, terrorists, or rabble rousing citizenry, you get run over. · Aug 8 at 9:55pm
Anyone remember the Rodney King riots?
Heck, anyone remember the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot? · Aug 8 at 10:38pm
I think the difference here is that this happened over a second night. Almost any city -- even in Texas -- can have a riot. It's when it happens again that you have a fundamental societal problem.
Dec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
AmishDude
I think the difference here is that this happened over a second night. Almost any city -- even in Texas -- can have a riot. It's when it happens again that you have a fundamental societal problem. · Aug 8 at 11:01pm
It's on it's third night, and spreading to other cities across Britain.
It's on a par with the rioting of France's Muslim youths or Greece's anarchists/socialists.
Oct '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Unfortunately this is the end game of the progressive experiment—the tyranny of anarchy. England is a society where everyone is a victim except the majority, where there is no right or wrong but only what benefits me is worshiped, where behavior that traditionally led to an ordered society is mocked and ridiculed, where the state inculcates and encourages a complete absence of personal responsibility and the country’s history is damned rather than admired. I only hope we stop the progressive experiment in America before we reach this point. Melanie Phillips had a thoughtful discussion of this in her book The World Turned Upside Down.
Mar '11
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Masterful summary, James.
I am in the UK at the moment, but well away from the riots (although they are getting closer).
England continues to be a green and pleasant land if you avoid the city centers - in much the same way that parts of the US remain beautiful, in spite of what Mr Obama and Prof Ayers' education system are doing to it.
Perfect timing for the release of Mr Steyn's book. As he is fond of saying, America is following the UK over the waterfall. We have a few years to paddle to the side of the river and get out of the canoe - but we seem, instead, to be paddling faster.
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 11:09amFeb '11
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Again I quote a now-defunct Italian blogger named Joy, who wrote in 2004:
Cupio dissolvi...These words have been going through my mind for quite a long time now. It's Latin. They mean "I (deeply) wish to be annihilated/to annihilate myself", the passive form signifying that the action can be carried out both by an external agent or by the subject himself...Cupio dissolvi... Through all the screaming and the shouting and the wailing and the waving of the rainbow cloth by those who invoke peace but want appeasement, I hear these terrible words ringing in my ears. These people have had this precious gift, this civilization, and they have got bored with it. They take all the advantages it offers them for granted, and despise the ideals that have powered it. They wish for annihilation, the next new thing, as if it was a wonderful party. Won't it be great, dancing on the ruins?
May '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
The reason they don't appreciate the gift they've been given is because it has not truly been given to them. The educational system and the culture taught them only the negatives about their own civilization and history, if it taught them anything at all about it. People are this nihilistic because they have been taught to be.
Apr '11
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
You have it right, James. Claire's post above offers a description from a London based blogger that engages in the usual excuse making (I clicked over and read the post entire).
These people rioting are not marginalized, repressed citizens. They receive free public education, free healthcare, and in many cases exist on the "dole" the beneficiaries of "benefits" for a lifetime. Many times they don't pay into the tax system that supports them. They're spoiled, violent, infants. Their society indulges them and their pitiful victimology. Pathetic.
May '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
By the way, all is not completely hopeless. England has been in a situation of widespread moral and social decay before, in the early 1700s, and it was Christian revival (led by John Wesley, George Whitefield, and the rest) that restored their national character.
Not only that, but this kind of renewal of the spiritual life of the nation led to great advances such as the abolition of slavery. (Most of the abolitionists in the U.S. as well as England were fervent Christians.)
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 5:51pmDec '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
Dennis Prager's bumper sticker motto is, The BIGGER the Government, the smaller the citizen. He's been explaining for years now how socialism destroys the character of the people.
My first glimpse of this occurred on a flight home from the UK in 1994. I was sitting next to a British "youth" (probably late 20s, early 30s) who seemed shy and nervous. I initiated a casual conversation with him in which I learned it was his first trip to the States. I asked him what he planned to see, the Grand Canyon?, Yellowstone?, Washington DC? Nope. Nothing relating to the sweeping natural beauty of the country or her best cultural offerings. He had two destinations and he'd studied the maps... Disney World and Hollywood. The horror.
Here was a young person of seemingly fairly modest means (I think it may have been his first plane trip ever) whose greatest ambition in life was to visit The Magic Kingdom and get the autographs of some Hollywood Starz! The disquiet I felt then is being born out now on the streets of London. Sad.
This should be one of the top five messages of conservatives: DANGER on the Left!
Jun '10
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
In another of his books, Our Culture: What's Left of It, Dalrymple discusses the infantilization of the males in the underclass (the kind of guys who burn and loot):
“The biological father is . . . free to use whatever income he has as his pocket money, for entertainment and little treats. He is thereby reduced to the status of a child, though a spoiled child with the physical capabilities of a man: petulant, demanding, querulous, self-centered, and violent if he doesn’t get his own way. The violence escalates and becomes a habit. A spoiled brat becomes an evil tyrant.”
Edited on August 9, 2011 at 5:22pmFeb '11
Re: What's It Going to Be Then, Eh?
A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
and
If you would have them be brothers, have them build a tower. But if you would have them hate each other, throw them corn.
Both quotes from Antoine de St-Exupery