It is fascinating to see how postmodern Western societies react to wide-scale rioting, looting, and thuggery aimed at innocents. In Britain, politicians contemplate the use of water cannons as if they were nuclear weapons; and here the mayor of Philadelphia calls on rappers to appeal to youth to help ease the flash-mobbing that has a clear racial component to it (is the attorney general’s Civil Rights Division investigating?). His appeal is perhaps understandable, but many of the themes of rap music — violence against the police, racial chauvinism, and nihilism—may well be some of the cultural catalysts behind the flash violence, though to suggest as much would be seen as more racist than the racist profiling used by the flash beaters. All these incidents are symptomatic of a general breakdown and loss of confidence in Western society. Such urban violence was of course a constant in 19th- and 20th-century Europe and America, but now it is deeply embedded within modern sociology and no longer seen quite as criminality.
We seem able to admit that massive federal and state entitlements have created a sense of dependency, a loss of self-respect and initiative, and a breakdown of the family, yet we still seem to fear that trimming the subsidies would lead to some sort of cold-turkey hyper-reaction. We assume that society is to blame for disaffected youth and therefore are hesitant to use commensurate force to quell the violence or even to make it clear that perpetrators are responsible for their own conduct. Yet at some point — when the violence reaches middle-class communities or, in serial fashion, downtown or suburban stores — we likewise assume that sufficient force will be used. Sociological exegesis will go out the window. Reality has a way of dispelling such cognitive luxuries.
On the national level, this sad paralysis, this Hamlet disease, is reflected in calls for more spending and stimulus even as we concede that we have no plan or ability to pay back the massive and unsustainable debt we’ve already run up. The president’s Keynesian technocrats, to whom he outsourced economic policy, have all quit or been fired, or are contemplating leaving soon. He is left fearing that the usual progressive stimulants — near-zero interest, massive federal borrowing, increases in unemployment insurance and food stamps, public works projects, middle-class tax holidays — have not worked, and yet he cannot imagine assuming responsibility, taking the heat, and trying something different. We can’t decide whether the Libyan rebels are noble reformers or — as we learn more and more that Gaddafi’s mercenary forces are as tough as many warned — incompetent and worse, so we sorta bomb, sorta not, sorta follow the French, sorta not. In other words, lancing these boils is seen as worse that letting the boils grow, so on matters of debt and foreign policy, for now we do nothing, though we know that at some point nature will take its course in the form of financial insolvency and humiliating defeat. Then our post facto recriminations will be even more acrimonious than our present loud inaction. We are left with the Roman maxim of the remedies seen as worse than the disease.
Yes, modern society is paralyzed...
...unless, of course, some six-year-old somewhere is selling lemonade without a license. Or a student-loan defaulter is in need of a visit from the SWAT team. Then we seem to get a move on.
The more minor the infraction, the more likely you'll get punished for it. It's the way of all advanced societies these days.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's called anarcho-tyranny.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTO: All
RE: Heh
Anyone with more than two synapses to rub together AND an understanding of that Old Book, saw this coming decades ago.
Now the 'tolerance' of evil has come home to roost, like so many chickens....with nasty claws and bad attitudes.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseP.S. But voices like that have been continually silenced by being 'banned' from various web-sites. Even those that claim to be 'conservative'. All you have to do is mention Christ....
Once the 'others' realize that society has no response to them and cannot stop them, they will not be stopped, and then there will be no 'society' either.
It's almost like the entire West is now Britain after Rome pulled out the last legion. For a brief while there was momentum and social norms keeping things in Roman order... a brief little while.
Since the testes of the West were removed decades ago, and its police and military made impotent, how long will the momentum carry us on this time?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReading Dr. Hanson is always a welcome trip down memory lane of History lessons from long ago. Its amazing that the left hasn't realized that when you allow your society to worship at the altar of government having all the answers you will end up with a citizenry that believes that they alone cannot solve any problem. Anyone with just a little common sense would look at a rioter in London and start looking for the nearest club to smack the rioter in the face. When we forget that the first guarantor of your freedom is yourself we lose any claim to living in a free society.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs for the "flash" rioting:
These criminals have the hot air from institutions of higher learning at their backs. Sociology departments across the country are busy now justifying this brute criminality as inevitable blowback from America's decades of sin. "What else do we expect?"
(Let's leave aside the utter racism in the low expectations of peoples' behaviors.)
Expecting rap artists to try to dial back this "flash violence" is akin to expecting the arsonist to rush to the flames with a hydrant hose.
It doesn't hurt their numbers or their cause that there is now a new periodical published in Vancouver, BC, Canada that encourages this brute violence on our streets. I found it in Barnes & Noble, and I was actually stunned to look at it. It's called ADBUSTERS.
Add the proverbial suffix preceded by a period, and see for yourself what they advocate.
Ultimately, socialism leads to violent upheaval, once everyone is sufficiently miserable. Too bad we still have so many polite members of society who still are so thoroughly committed to aiding and abetting its destruction of civil society.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusewhat does the 'proverbial suffix' mean???
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"com"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is post like this that make me wonder why Charles Murray's "In Our Hands" plan is not discussed, well, at all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen government can't or won't protect their citizens...then the citizens organize and protect themselves.
The folks who are rioting are doing so in the completely mistaken expectation that there aren't other folks who have a) only limited patience and b) itchy trigger fingers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere aren't any water cannons in England. They would have to be borrowed from Northern Ireland, and NI is loathe to give them up in marching season.
Just saying.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI doubt they'll use water cannons in England.
Wouldn't that magnitude of water usage be bad for the "environment"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust wait for the post election summer of 2013. If the Dems lose in 2012 they will turn the whole country into versions of what we saw in Madison WI earlier this year. The 'community organizers' and anarchists (the base of the Dem party) will be hard at work in early 2013 to make this come about. More fun to come.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI do wish Mr. Hanson would, on occasion, pull out and maybe even read a couple of history books before he engages in one of his periodical whining rants about how inferior his fellow Americans are to himself.
He's stunningly oblivious to the lynch mobs, labor riots, strikebreakers, race riots, slave rebellions, Indian massacres, tax riots, foolhardy and badly planned military adventures, secessionist movements, legislative deadlocks and shenanigans, Presidential follies, etc. of which American history is replete and that I'd think that even someone like Mr. Hanson who attended the University of California at Santa Cruz might have learned about along the way.
To be fair, I know he also attended Stanford, but given that what he received there was a Ph.D that enables him to say he's learned more and more about less and less so that he now knows everything about nothing, I don't expect much from him on that score.
But seriously, dude: before you spend too much more time trashing this country at least read a book or two about the place and recognize that there's almost nothing going on right now that we have't gone through in some iteration - usually worse - in the past.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, Victor Davis Hanson needs to read a history book.
On that subject, Mark Steyn should also watch a Broadway musical or two, that uncultured philistine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat do the things you mention have to do with anything in Mr Hanson's essay? What relevance do they have to the situation we face now?
Are you saying that the seemingly racist wilding in WI were a response to the fact that we prevailed against the native Americans all those years ago?
If not, then what, exactly, are you talking about?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm saying that Mr. Hanson's occasional forays into expressing his loathing of this country and of his fellow Americans is evidence of his ignorance of American history.
Like a televised rant from the very-self-impressed Michael Moore or Ralph Nader, it gets tiresome. Mr. Hanson's not alone - you get this kind of "Americans Are Inferior to Me" rant from the right and left. But if I'm wrong about his ignorance then I'm right about his obnoxious, elitist arrogance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, undoubtedly Mr Hanson should try reading some history books.
Perhaps he can start with these:
Why The West Was Won
Carnage and Culture
Between War and Peace
Ripples of Battle
oops, my bad. It's unlikely he'll read those.
I suggest you investigate and find out why.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHahahahahahaha!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBart,
Sorry, But I don't consider a gang of wilding inner city hooligans as “fellow Americans.” Neither do I consider anarchists, socialists, Marxists, communists, illegal immigrants, many naturalized immigrants, any Moslem etc.etc to be equals with my blood relations, my neighbors, my brothers in arms, my co-religionists’ or any other town born resident of Ogden, Utah, as my fellow countrymen. That is the way these things work.
It is common knowledge that western intellectuals have clamored for the demographic transformations of their respective societies to make the political and cultural transformations they are so enamored with that much easier. They have “broken in order to rebuild” but left rubble and detritus in their wake.
There is nothing left in all of Britain worth saving. Many thinking people want to see the whole rotten western structure collapse. Let the wards of the state fend for themselves when there are no more nation states. Let women with warrior fantasies fight in a world of swords and spears and not pose as Amazons in a world of military bureaucracy and hyper technology. Let communities be organized around a church and an important economic activity and not by common grievances or an expectation of the dole. Let a women think twice before she lay with a deadbeat who cannot support or defend her and her children.
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