Four days of rioting by mobs of youths have left parts of London looking like a war zone. Rioters have smashed and looted shops, and set fire to buildings and cars. Copycat riots have spread to Birmingham and Liverpool. People have lost their homes or their livelihoods.
The fate of a single individual, Mark Duggan, began the chain of events. Confronting him in the belief that he was armed, police fired first and killed him. Whether Duggan really was armed, and whether he would have shot at the police, is under investigation. Not informed properly about what had happened, the Duggan family started a peaceful protest.
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How did this suddenly become an explosion? Duggan was a man of mixed race, and lived in an ethnically diverse area with a history of racial tension between residents and the police. Race, however, does not seem to be the explanation. Rioters mostly wear jackets with hoods pulled over their heads enough to hide their faces, but those whose races are identifiable are as often white as black.
The mobs certainly stole all manner of things, from television sets and clothes to food and drink, while vandalizing what they couldn’t carry. Yet they used the requisite modern gadgetry to mobilize and muster, to switch objectives and defeat police tactics that might have contained them. What happened was more purposeful and organized than random.
The deeper cause of the violence, then, seems to be a generalized anarchy, that special lawlessness which is the hallmark of poorly socialized young males. Neither parents nor teachers have taught these “hoodies” to know any better. They have grown up outside restraints of conscience or manners, and without any fear of discipline, never mind punishment.
The leftist establishment for many years has been assiduously encouraging this monster, excusing what is inexcusable, rewarding anti-social behavior. The view that indulgence is the right response to cruelty and mindless violence meets its fulfillment in the arrest of many hundreds of thuggish criminals, the introduction of plastic bullets for the police, the pall of smoke from fires lit by arsonists, and the shudder of fear and anger afflicting ordinary people.
Shudder and fear yes, but don't underestimate the reserve of the populace, though challenged by social media (the 'flash' aspects of these mobs has been facilitated by the cheap blackberry/mobile phone service offers over the past months), when the lion's tail gets twisted.
The cops shot one miserable thug and now it seems that they've completely run out of bullets.
Britain has been a valueless society for far too long-- heck, even their leading religious figure (well, the Christian one, anyhow) promotes the sort of "I'm-OK-you're-OK-and-we're-all-entitled" sort of drivel. Well, when folks are raised to believe that they're entitled, and then find out that their entitlements are in danger, they get angry. And when they're raised to believe that morality, restraint and civic virtue are silly, this is what you get...
At the risk of being a wag, this strikes me as a good time to repeal child labour laws, end the dole, and restore the right to bear arms. They wouldn't be doing this if Henry VIII were in the palace!
The police were ordered to stand down. Looting is taking place in areas where people were disarmed. The social experiment that began with Thatcher has completely failed. The prison gang culture teaches it is cool to be thugs, to be on welfare, to get HIV.
When the Labor party encouraged mass influx of immigrants into England in order to make the UK multi-cultural and to bring in cheap labor and people who would vote for them, they created the mess that they are in. One of the "rules of radicals" is to overload the system. We need to watch and learn and then have a plan ready. Our own government has been following the same policies. These riots could easily happen here. It just takes one match to start a forest fire when things are already hot...
The basic problem is anarchistic Mullahs preaching hatred of all things English and Christian in Mosques throughout Englands once-fair land. They should be deported, as should any lawbreakers. They have no right to wellfare or citizenship.
Come on now, guys, we all really know all this violence is the result of "violent left-wing rhetoric".
"Violent right-wing rhetoric" always gets blamed whenever some nutjob starts shooting people, it's time for the left to take a turn when welfare hooligans start trashing the place.
Then again we could always get it over with and blame the whole thing on Bush and the S&P's bad math...
(And in all seriousness, the CAPTCHA was "politically correct".)
If the Met Police had any guts, they take a lesson from old Dick Daley in Chicago and open fire on these brats. Leave a few dozens of London's sons and daughters bleeding out in the street will end this riot in hours.
The British people allowed themselves to be disarmed, with assurances that they needed no guns of their own, since the Bobbies, unarmed themselves, would always be there to protect them. They bought this BS, and they deserve what they're getting now.How often we heard them calling us "cowboys and gun worshippers". But I wonder how long this senselessness would have continued had a few of their malevolent offspring been shot dead by a shopkeeper protecting his own turf or by another British subject carrying a licensed handgun. They are reaping what they have sown, and I pray my fellow citizens see this for what it is, the inevitable failure of the government to be everywhere, at all times, for every one of us.
Me, I carry a Colt .45 because a policeman is too heavy.
So true. England was once the greatest nation in history. It brought culture and modernization to the globe, stood up to tyranny, and was a benevolent empire. Look at it now. A degenerate royal family leeching off the taxpayers; a social welfare state going broke; a national health care system that sedates it old and sick to death to get them off the budget; a pathetic military that nearly got whipped by the Argentinians; a country that turned its back on religion. A decrepit nation.
As a person of Italian, German, and Irish descent (but not English), may I opine that England was ALWAYS a decrepit nation full of silly people? And, may I opine that most of the greatest world culture has come from Italy, Germany, and Ireland? Thank you.
No, Gyre, you may not. On the other hand, go ahead - if you insist on passing for a pluri-jingoistic, ignorant mountebank. You make no sense, don't know what History is, and are yourself responsible for creating absolutel ynothing. I'm not English, but very sad about what's been happening to England.
I don't get what leftism has to do with any of this? Can someone give me a SPECIFIC example? I hate to say it, but this editorial is a tad similar to the shameful ones that the NY Times puts up, with baseless accusations flung against the Right and the Tea Party with either no explanation provided, or a sloppy, nonsensical one.
How is this riot that much different from, say, the New York Draft Riots, which were the worst riots that this country has ever experienced? (And they took place in the mid-19th century, before the advent of leftistm.)
Feminism = the left side of the political spectrum, certainly not the right = women need men like fish need bicycles = encouragement of mass exodus of mothers from the home into the workplace = no one's home to care for or civilize children = increasing disregard of legitimate authority on the part of young people = entitlement attitude which is generally encouraged by "progressive" theories of child rearing and lackadaisical, progressive discipline procedures in our schools = lack of moral and ethical restraints to violating others and/or their property = rioting, vandalism, and looting when there aren't enough physical restraints, i.e., policing, to stop them.
I hope this explanation is specific enough for you.
You need to keep up with current events. The education system has broken down dramatically where civics, duty, honor, and other values are not taught and have been supplanted by moral relativism, a mainstay of Marxism and the Left. The thugs burning London are a product of the corruption of the education system. You wanted an example, now you have it. The article is probably too advanced for you. Might I suggest Politico or the Huffington Post, I hear they have pictures and illustrations.
Check out this link to the two genius young ladies, shooting off their mouths, who were involved in the looting and rioting: External Link.
In the audio clip they rail against the rich, conservatives and shop owners...saying that they can do whatever they want. Now, I don't know of many right-minded folk who rail against those targets...so, accept that link as Exhibit A.
Also, I think that there is a small core of anarchists who are spurring on the useful idiots and slackers who are spoiling for any excuse to act in an uncivilized manner. But the vast bulk of what I've read and seen indicates that the rioters are chiefly those who have gotten something for nothing for a long time, and recent cutbacks in the UK have threatened this lifestyle. If those kind of folks aren't "leftists," then I don't know who is.
