by Smitty
Daily Pundit links Taylor at Outside the Beltway on the British riots in what is yet another willful attempt at non-analysis:
As best I can tell, the riots did not have a political motivation (the spark/excuse was the police shooting a suspect) and the general tenor appears to be wanton criminality rather than political statement. Certainly the current economic situation (and the relevant politics) is feeding the behavior, but at this point I don’t think that one can make broad political claims.
Oh horsepucky, Taylor: if these riots lack a political basis, then so did the American Revolution. The differences are (a) that these rioters are much closer to Parliament, and (b) there is no leadership core to kick the useless Parliament to the curb.
These types of events are complicated and one suspects that understanding this particular event will take some time to accomplish. I certainly am not going to claim to have answers at this point and am skeptical about those who claim to understand the event, especially if they think it fits some simplistic ideological worldview.
Taylor, obfuscation is as great a sin as oversimplification. What’s at work here is the unwillingness of the Progressive, Ruling Class Overlords to take an honest look at the situation. Honesty implies some notion of truth, some objective standard against which measurement occurs. Thanks for self-identifying as one of the spineless sophists more part of the problem than the solution, Taylor. Intellectually curious people should avoid your classes like ObamaCare.
Well, if you get the chance ….
Must see: ‘VIDEO Flashback: Armed Korean Grocers Defend Property During 1992 Los Angeles Riots’.
May I recommend Max Hastings’s excellent rant-essay: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html
Progressives can only keep their footsoldiers in destitute indenture or slavery for only so long. These riots look like the poor destroying their only slightly less poor neighbors.
Dude, I didn’t even realize Max Hastings wrote a regular column! I’m reading his really excellent book about the Pacific Theater in WWII (“Retribution; the battle for Japan”). This is awesome!
Er… finding out about Sir Hastings, that is–not the riots.
English rioters are such wussies.
This is a pretty good summary of why England is one big FAIL. Don’t get too smug. We are not that far behind them.
Good thoughts Smitty got you linked at the DaleyGator
Pendulum by John Christopher
“this is not science fiction, but teror-probability, as the England we know – “the guardian of justice and peace” – is thrown into violent convulsions by an economic depression reminiscent of the gloomy days between the two World Wars.
For those who can remember those day of evil it is something to be accepted. But for the young, it is a call to strike. Gangs of Hooligans rampage throughout the land bringing in their wake a bitterness and anger that is almost sub-human.
Action, as always, produces reaction. The pendulum swings yet again, but the stability that follows is that of supra-discipline, of grim religious retaliation. And the England that had been warm is now a country of freedom-frozen despondency.
Originally published in 1968, the nightmare happenings of Pendulum seem if anything even more probable today.”
The only thing he didn’t anticipate, it seems, is the Muslim factor. Been a long time since I read this, and ‘No Blade Of Grass” – might have to order up a copy.
[…] at The Other McCain has already written a rebuttal of Steven L. Taylor’s post at Outside the Beltway in which he asserts that the London riots […]
Both the columns Joe and DavoO linked are excerpted, along with comments by Andrew McCarthy, Charles Crawford, etc. over at my joint in The Flames Of Albion: A Clockwork Orange.
PS: Pictures included, as well.
Death to the Ruling Class Overlords!
Great choice in titles. When that movie came out it didn’t seem that implausible, perhaps it still doesn’t.
Smitty, the rioters had a political motive…if nihlism is a motive. I understand that was not your intention, but to compare this nonsens in any way to the American Revolution is insulting.
The “police shooting” that supposedly triggered this round of lawlessness wasn’t some instance worthy of outrage. The man was shot in a minicab from which shots were fired at police. He was hit by return fire. Either he shot first, in which case he deserved what he got, or the cabbie shot at the cops and the man was in the wrong place at the wrong time – but in that case it’s an obvious tragic accident.
Besides, just like with the LA riots, if they were some sort of protest of injustice, they were very different sorts. “I see injustice, therefore I must smash random cars, burn random buildings, assault and rob random people, and generally destroy anything I can reach – in the name of justice!” Right.
You don’t protest injustice by stealing the iPods and then setting fire to the store.
As in LA, these are criminal acts, violent acts, a breakdown of civil order, the most fundamental duty of any government. The government is negligent in allowing this to go on so long, and for even bothering to debate the use of water cannons and rubber bullets. You stop looters with live ammo. You stop arsonists with live ammo.