Theodore Dalrymple: The Veneer of Civilization. Utterly removed.

The Manhattan Institute / National Review ^ | September 26, 2005 | Theodore Dalrymple

[cornelis]

pure intellectual dishonesty

One important point made which you don't need to be a pure intellectual for: evil is a jack in the box and it shows its face once in a while.

[Old Professer]

The picture that was painted in my mind by all this more resembles that of an isolated household comprised of many pets and an old lady who suddenly dies, cutting off all the deliveries of the pets' needs.

After a few days the pets have trashed the house, messed the floor and are fighting over the sparse meat left on the corpse of their once mighty queen.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Anyone remember the blackout of New York about 1965?
there was almost no crime or looting.

Remember the blackout of New York years later when Carter was president? Mass looting in black areas. Carter said it was just hungry folks looking for food. How a man looting and carrying a 300 lb. couch on his back is related to hunger I don't know.

I think the problem really bagan with the various riots of the late 1960's when the governments refused to put them down, just cordoning off the areas and letting them burn themselves out. Perhaps it's time to start shooting back.

[John Robertson]

"By and large, this article is pure intellectual dishonesty."

In my opinion, he said precisely what you said his essay was missing...but he did it with intellectual incisiveness, grace, stunning language and a great logical probity. Maybe it's just me.

[Jackson Brown]

""Pictures of the looting that followed the devastation in New Orleans have been flashed around the world. Everyone is, or at least pretends to be, shocked and horrified, as if the breakdown of law and order couldn’t happen here..."

Anyone who is old enough to have lived through the 60s, or was paying attention during things like Rodney King and the LA riots, should be laughing at this assertion.

[GreyFriar]

Ping

[teawithmisswilliams]

It is also an informal fallacy to compare the poor of the US with the poor of Bombay. Those two groups of people live very different lives in very different circumstances.

Dalrymple, who has searing intellectual honesty, imho, notes exactly that. The poor of Bombay have not been funded with state-provided welfare for generations, and have not been subjected to the intellectual dishonesty of affirmative action and race-baiters, as Dalrymple notes.

[agere_contra]

comparative poverty, that last resort of the liberal who is eager to find an economic explanation of human frailty and wickedness

intellectual incisiveness - absolutely.

[6ppc]

The survivors of the tsunami reported their terror at the size and destructive force of the wave, of course, but in no instance that I recall did they mention having been robbed by other survivors, let along going in fear of armed gangs.

He is wrong. I remember reports of gangs of outlaws after the tsunami, although I would have a hard time tracking down the specific articles.

[wildcatf4f3]

bump

[cornelis]

I don't admit the premise "absence of disorder in Bombay."

[durasell]

Oh no, first we lose the veneer of civilization, then goes the patina of good manners.

[schu]

The poor in Bombay and in the Tsunami acted very differently after the catastrophes in their midst than the "poor" in NO. Clearly the behavior is hard to correlate with wealth, so it must be something else.

Could it be the "culture of entitlement" mentality that has been foisted on and sold to these people by the idea of welfare and by the race/poverty pimps? What other explanation is there?

schu

[redgolum]

In part you are right, but Bombay is not "Christian", and there wasn't this type of looting.

Part of it is opportunity (how much there was to loot) and part is just the mindset of the people. As the old song says, give a man a house, and he will break out the windows.

Or in this case break into the stores.

[spunkets]

Re: The Veneer of Civilization. Utterly removed.

"Pictures of the looting... Everyone is, or at least pretends to be, shocked and horrified, as if the breakdown of law and order couldn’t happen here, wherever here happens to be.

Dalrymple misses quite a bit. Criminals don't represent civilization. The govm't and law abiding citizens do. He failed to note that govm't forces broke into homes, detained and cuffed law abiding citizens and ransacked their homes searching for their arms, their means of protection from the criminal element. Vocal opponents were arrested. If Dalrymple wants to ponder civilization, he should be focusing on the barbaric, illegal actions of those claiming to be civilized, but are only pretending.

[jocon307]

His explanation of why folks would shoot at rescuers makes a lot of sense.

Good post.

[cornelis]

If Dalrymple wants to ponder civilization, he should be focusing on the barbaric, illegal actions of those claiming to be civilized, but are only pretending.

I've always had a sense that some of this behavior is always lurking round about wherever I have lived.

[RightWhale]

The Mayor of NO said that drugs flow freely in NO, and the looters were druggies jonseing out there for anything to cut the unease of sudden withdrawal.

[fr_freak]

The civilized veneers are much thinner on some than on others.

Exactly. Many, if not most, in this country would remain civilized even under the most extreme circumstances, because those are the values they live by. The problem, even in a fully-operating civilized society, has always been how to contain those who are uncivilized. All that Katrina did to NO was remove that threat for a while.

I think a better analogy than the "thin veneer" would be one where civilized society is holding a tiger on a leash. We're OK as long as the leash doesn't break.