London Riots IV - How not to deter crime

At Powerline today is an essay by Joyce Lee Malcolm on British efforts to make committing crimes more pleasant.  If that sounds sarcastic then read the essay, and see for yourself, it reads like something by Waugh or Wodehouse.  I think my favorite item is this:

"This past February the gardeners of Surrey were told they could not use wire mesh on the windows of their sheds because burglers might get hurt breaking in."

It seems Britain's unique achievement has been to create a Leviathan without any of the Hobbesian benefits.
Read the whole thing: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/08/malcolms-moment.php

London Riots - causes?

At the Daily Mail Max Hastings has an interesting column on the London riots.  Hastings says the rioters remind him of the polar bear who attacked the Norwegian tourist, except that the bear was shot.  And he quotes a police chief who earlier had described the “feral children” on his watch.

“The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.”
No surprise there.  But Hastings doesn’t blame this state of affairs on a lack of spending on education, or income inequality, or any of the other causes often trotted out during my life time.

“Today, those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want.  When social surveys speak of ‘deprivation’ and ‘poverty’, this is entirely relative….

Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.

This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect. It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion which modern society finds unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything different or better.”

Hastings goes on to describe the effects of this failure to apply a measure of compulsion in the schools and anywhere else and in a criminal justice system which is of the same mind:  "‘The problem,’ said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester’s Nuisance Strategy Unit, ‘is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.’

Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ‘disproportionate’ action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ‘the feds’.”

We have in short, become so “civilized” that we’ve lost civilization.

Read the whole thing http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html

London Riots III - thoughts from Michael Kelly

To Michael Kelly it was clear, it was/is all Sinatra’s fault as the prototypical iconic celebrity.

“The iconic celebrity is the result of the central confusion of the age, which is that people possessed of creative or artistic gifts are somehow teachers—role models—in matters of personal conduct.”

Kelly delineates the model to be aspired to before Frank:

“He possesses an outward cynicism, but this is understood to be merely clothing; at his core, he is a square….He is willing to die for his beliefs, and his beliefs are, although he takes pains to hide it, old fashioned.  He believes in truth, justice, and the American way and love.  He is, after his fashion, a gentleman and, in a quite modern manner, a sexual egalitarian.  He is forthright, contemptuous of dishonesty in all its forms, from posing to lying….He is honorable and virtuous, although he is properly suspicious of men who talk about honor and virtue.  He may be world-weary, but he is not ironic.”

Then came Sinatra:

“The new cool man that Sinatra defined was a very different creature.  Cool said the old values were for suckers.  Cool was looking out for number one always.  Cool didn’t get mad; it got even.  Cool didn’t go to war: Saps went to war, and anyway, cool had no beliefs it was willing to die for….Cool was a cad and boastful about it; in cool’s philosophy, the lady was always a tramp, and to be treated accordingly.  Cool was not on the side of the law; cool made its own laws….cool was nihilistic.  Cool was not virtuous; it reveled in vice.  Before cool, being good was still hip; after cool, only being bad was.”

King of Cool, Things Worth Fighting For, Michael Kelly  
http://www.amazon.com/Things-Worth-Fighting-Collected-Writings/dp/B000BTH5OY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312928216&sr=1-1

London Riots II

I dashed off something last night on the London riots making the point that civilization is something of a bluff.  Via Instapundit, I see Richard Fernandez echoeing that point:

"Since no police force has the numbers to be everywhere at once, it maintains order through the force of its name, the power of the uniform. This was once known as ‘prestige’; today it is better known as ‘legitimacy’.  Although as insubstantial as air it is as vital as oxygen. Without it things become very dificult. Once the authorities begin [to] lose their prestige they must rely ever more heavily on force, of which there is never, ever enough.


In one sense legitimacy is the fiction on which society is based. It is to government what confidence is to a bank.  As long as everyone believes that the bank will pay the depositor no one will demand all his money back. As long as most believe that the King’s justice is effectively invincible, no one will challenge it. But when a government behaves in a supine manner for an extended period — or a bank refuses to pay out without a good reason — then doubts begin to grow."
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/08/09/youth/

I take this as one of the fundamental divides between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives understand that civilization is fragile, that it hinges on norms, shared understanding, prestige.  Liberal-Progressive is literally progressive, it takes it as a given that things must move forward (unless reactionary forces win out), and so it has no compunction about attacking traditional understandings which hold society together.  The Liberal-Progressive view has dominated throughout my lifetime.  The London riots are a good indication of what results from that understanding of the world.

London Riots

I think we assume that civilization is the norm, and fail to recognize how fragile it is.  The whole thing is actually something of a bluff.  Like a school classroom, the teacher can command the room but only if most of the students are inclined to behave.  That inclination to not to break things up is in part a response to the perceived potential punishment, but only in part.  Far greater, is simply the self keeping the self in control on the self understanding that to misbehave is wrong, diminishes oneself. When that goes in a large enough group, authority is hard pressed to hold.

The London riots will of course accomplish nothing.  The cost has already been great:

From the Telegraph's live coverage: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8687177/London-riots-live.html

23.15 Trevor Reeves, owner of the furniture store torched in Croydon tonight, told Sky News his life had been ruined tonight. The firm was established in 1867.
It has just provided my family and the 15 or 20 staff and families that were supported, it's just completely destroyed. Words fail me. It's just gone, it's five generations. My father is distraught at the moment. It's just mindless thuggery.