Update: in the Wall Street Journal, Theodore Dalrymple picks up the theme with his opinion piece, "The Barbarians Inside Britain's Gates". Says the good Doctor,
"The rioters in the news last week had a thwarted sense of entitlement that has been assiduously cultivated by an alliance of intellectuals, governments and bureaucrats. 'We're fed up with being broke,' one rioter was reported as having said, as if having enough money to satisfy one's desires were a human right rather than something to be earned."
At Commentary, Peter Wehner writes about the English riots. Quoting Prime Minister David Cameron,
"There are parts of our society that are not just broken but frankly sick. When we see children of 12 or 13 looting it’s clear there are things that are badly wrong in our society. There is a complete lack of responsibility in some parts of our society. People are allowed to feel the world owes them something and that their actions don’t have consequences.”
Agreed. But it goes deeper than that. Consider this quote by Scottish writer and politician John Buchan, writing from another age,
“My fear was not barbarism, which is civilisation submerged or not yet born, but de-civilisation, which is civilisation gone rotten. It was not the return of the Dark Ages that I feared, but the coming of a too garish age, when life would be lived in the glare of neon lamps and the spirit would have no solitude… a civilization bemused by an opulent materialism has been met by a rude challenge.”
(Via InstaPundit)
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