My weekend column is on London ablaze and a society summed up by the relevant chapter title in my new book (“The New Britannia: The Depraved City”). The scenes we’ve witnessed this last week ought to prompt some serious soul-searching by liberal elites. I nearly said “paternalist,” but, as Tocqueville noted, the word paternalism implies that your object is to raise your charges to adulthood, whereas the children of dependency are maintained by government in a state of permanent and increasingly feral adolescence.
Are we likely to get that soul-searching? Charles Crawford, sometime NR cruiser and formerly Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador in various parts of Mitteleuropa, thinks not:
The only worse thing than having a problem is not knowing you have a problem.
And even worse than not knowing you have a problem is knowing you have a problem, but being unwilling to accept responsibility for doing anything about it.
And that’s the problem of our political elites, from all parties.
They dimly sense that things have gone badly awry, with Sprawling State (UK and EU combined) no longer the answer. But they just don’t have the strength or insight or idealism to do anything meaningful about it.
Peter Hitchens is inclined to agree:
As the polluted flood (it is not a tide; it will not go back down again) of spite, greed and violence washes on to their very doorsteps, well-off and influential Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally.
No doubt they will find ways to save themselves. But they will not save the country. Because even now they will not admit that all their ideas are wrong, and that the policies of the past 50 years – the policies they love – have been a terrible mistake. I have heard them in the past few days clinging to their old excuses of non-existent ‘poverty’ and ‘exclusion’.
I think they will have difficulty “saving themselves.” I have many in-laws and friends in delightful corners of village England, where as the sun rises on ancient hedgerows and thatched cottages it is easy to believe the paralytic chavs and incendiary imams and all the rest are somewhere far away and always will be. As leftie columnists in their Hampstead redoubts began (privately) to calculate as the rioters moved in from the less fashionable arrondissements, on a small island the mob doesn’t stay beyond the horizon for long.
Mark, you're such a simpleton.
Don't you see the root causes? Don't you realise they went after TVs and trainers because we have not given them enough for free already?
Although these staving and huddled masses are neither starving nor huddled can you not see how redistributing wealth from the rich will solve this?
These riots were simply pre-emptive politically minded expressions of rage aimed at cuts that have not yet occurred.
There were no problems last April, this is all because of a Tory government.
Any fule can see that. Why can't you?
Regards, Me.
(Barricaded in Notting Hill)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAMC series 'The Walking Dead' captures this post well. Some survivors are living on a hill outside Atlanta, which has been overrun with zombies. But as the first season concludes, the zombies have ventured out of their normal stomping grounds and are attacking their safe haven. I believe that to be the perfect metaphor to your post, with of course the zombies as...well, the welfare zombies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood analogy, Denroy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTruly, Mark if you actually believe your "ought to prompt some serious soul-searching by liberal elites." then you've been a hostage too long. You've got media/cultural elite Stockholm syndrome.
Michael Savage popularized the notion that liberalism is a mental disorder. It is either that, or mental arrest. Have any conversation with a liberal and once you reach their favorite aphorism...Palin is stupid, the rich don't pay their fair share, whatever...then it is game over. The conversation has effectively ended.
Narcissism plus beauty gives us movie stars and can be amusing, but doesn't hurt us.
Narcissism plus politics gives us liberals and the slo-mo failed state. Liberals are the proverbial frogs in the cooking pot, and the irony is indeed they are also reaching out of the cookpot to turn up the heat on their own burner. We just seem to be along for the ride.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm afraid you are correct. Reason and logic have no power against their "feeeeeeling the right answer." It is all quite depressing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSometimes the conversation doesn't even start. My older sister will read something in the liberal echo chamber and start hurling insults at me. I've given up hope that she will change (LOL - hope and change) and decide to have an intelligent conversation with me some day.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Say to him that mass immigration should be stopped and reversed, and that those who refuse any of the huge number of jobs which are then available should be denied benefits of any kind, and he will gibber in shock."
Yes.
It can't be said loudly enough or frequently enough. Immigration at this scale has gone on for far, far, far too long.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePip, there won't be a shire.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's exactly what I was thinking reading Mr. Steyn's post.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"....all their ideas are wrong...
This is the critical point: ALL their ideas are wrong.
Every last one of them. And the welfare state, and the welfare globe, that the left has constructed over the last many decades must be dismantled, brick by brick; otherwise it'll be knocked to the ground by the very people housed in it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI notice that Mr. Hitchens's column is not accepting comments "for legal reasons." Is this yet another manifestation of the Brit tendency to only regulate the law-abiding?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe whole of it makes me want to weep.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBy the way, aside from the sobering topic, the book is great!
Who knew national suicide could bring so many yuks?
Good, if sobering, stuff!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm as sympathetic as the next guy for Great Britain's plight, but I think we all knew there'd be a karmic payback for Benny Hill and Herman's Hermits.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusebingo !
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd all accompanied by a bit of the old Ludwig Van...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePolly Toynbee of the Guardian has insanely claimed that ''more liberalism is the answer''
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI guess next time we have to have our loot ready for handing over and then beat ourselves with a baseball bat and torch our own homes to save the ''voiceless'' the trouble.
Is this that different from the liberal residents of California?
They've destroyed their own state with over regulation and taxation, overspending, welcome illegal immigration, etc. And now they're moving to other western states and pushing for the same policies. They're like well-intentioned locusts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIs this that different from the liberal residents of California?
They've destroyed their own state by electing legislators bent on over regulation and taxation, overspending, welcome illegal immigration, etc. And now they're moving to other western states and pushing for the same policies. They're like well-intentioned locusts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMark,
I think the word is domestication, not paternalization. They've successfully kept them from reaching adulthood, but have yet to suppress their adolescence.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse