See something, say something...
Posted on 09/14/2011 10:08:57 AM PDT by XHogPilot
Who can forget Stanley Kubrick's dystopian tale of coddled hooligans run amok in pre-Thatcher England? Who is surprised that life is back to imitating art?
Last week's cultural eruption in London was not just an assault on property. It was a bold repudiation of the concept of property. The violence was widespread but it wasn't mindless. It was the natural consequence of an economic philosophy that holds great sway in many western democracies. This particular manifestation differed from what we've seen in Greece, yet the same moral decay preceded both. What's worse, the source of this decay is not an external force dedicated to evil but the policies of duly elected democratic governments sworn to promote the common good.
The rot is best captured in a riddle that has been making the rounds on the internet.
Q: What's the difference between the British welfare system and louts looting London? A: The louts cut out the middleman.
What happens when you teach people that profits are theft, that inequality of outcome is injustice, and that it is a basic human right for every citizen to have "access" to all the consumer goods their eyes behold?
What happens when you provide children with a public education so bad it renders them unfit for employment and once they become adults you pay them not to work, leaving them to rant at immigrants happy to take those few low skill jobs that haven't been destroyed by the heavy hand of regulation?
What happens when entire political parties devote themselves to securing, expanding, and defending massive income redistribution programs to the point that recipients become so numerous that they tilt the electoral balance?
What happens when you start limiting those programs to stave off national bankruptcy, yet you've disarmed law abiding citizens, instead promising them police protection that never comes?
London burns.
Think it can't happen here? Then you haven't been to Philadelphia, where flash mobs have been going on wilding sprees, robbing inner city residents and looting local stores, using overwhelming numbers to confound police, daring them to create "police brutality" incidents that can be used to incite further violence.
Problems like this don't arise overnight. Economies that rely on the rule of law must rest on a widely accepted moral foundation. This foundation is not immune from being chipped away. Unless we all confront and fight moral degeneration wherever we see it, it will inevitably take its toll. If society reaches the point that it takes a phalanx of policemen to protect every shopkeeper, the war has already been lost.
When was the last time you heard a major cultural figure say that welfare recipients should be grateful, humble, and embarrassed, compared to the army of poverty professionals and community organizers that trumpet welfare "rights" demanding ever more? What happens to a free market economy whose growth depends on entrepreneurs when a President incessantly rails at "millionaires and billionaires," claiming that "the people" have an a priori right to share the property of any citizen solely because certain citizens have more and some have less? How can anyone be surprised when those with less are inspired to take matters into their own hands?
It may sound harsh but if society's losers don't understand why they are losing, what personal responsibility they bear for their failings, what actions they can take to improve their own lot, and why it is wicked and shameful to burn, loot, and steal, then it's our job to teach them. The prospect of swift and certain punishment is a good place to start. Politicians that pander to lawless factions and their apologists need to be taught a lesson as well, via rapid electoral retirement. Academic, religious, and cultural leaders who excuse these outbursts of violence or try to justify them based on a misguided altruist creed need to be vigorously debated or booed off the stage. Not doing so is equivalent to granting their repugnant ideas your moral sanction.
Class warfare need not be just a metaphor. If its moral underpinnings aren't addressed and demolished, it is coming to a city near you.
“What happened to the concepts of personal responsibility, measured risk, and reward for good decisions?”
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Washed away in the pathological tidal wave of non-judgmentalism and moral relativism.
See the attacks on the Roman Catholic Church.
>>Who can forget Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian tale of coddled hooligans run amok in pre-Thatcher England?
ANTHONY BURGESS WROTE THE BOOK, IDIOT!
See something, say something...
we’ve had drooge culture here for decades now
Snort, guffaw...
Korova milk bar = Medical Pot outlet.
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is
Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really Dim, and we sat
at the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to
do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter b*st*rd
though dry. The Korova Milkbar was milk-plus mesto....
yes.
Yes, but for the vast majority, their experience of “Clockwork” is via the Kubrick filmed version. It’s very horrowshaw, my droogie. . . (and yes, I **DO** speak Nadsat!!)
That movie permantly ruined the song Sing’n in tne Rain for me.
Fails to note one key factor: those not looting faced prosecution if they fought back.
The version of Sing’n In The Rain that Walter Carlos did for the movie (alas, unused) was magnificent.
“ANTHONY BURGESS WROTE THE BOOK...”
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Which even had its own index of Droog vocabulary in the back of the book, if I recall correctly.
Ah, but who actually reads any more when you can do “cool” stuff like watch movies on your phone.
As in the movie, the greatest horror is NOT the violent gangs, it is the GOVERNMENT.
That article should be a tolchock in the rot
Yup. And it makes you think of the nature of good and evil. Do you become good just because the government physically induces you to stop being evil?
Redistribute The Wealth,
Siph0n Gas From Your Neighbor's Car!
"That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest." - James Madison - 1792
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God . . . anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." - John Adams
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