Britain's liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every socia

[WestViking]

This is the stuff no one wants to hear and why riots will not be confined to British cities. We have lessons to learn if we want to avoid similar disasters.

Britain's liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value

By Melanie Phillips

Daily Mail (Britain)

11th August 2011

So now the chickens have well and truly come home terrifyingly to roost. The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtu-ally every basic social value.

The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.

Those of us who warned over the years that they were playing with fire were sneered at and smeared as Right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.

Now we can see what they have brought about in the unprecedented and horrific scenes of mob violence, with homes and businesses going up in flames, and epidemic looting.

Clearly, there is some as yet unidentified direction and co-ordination behind the anarchy. But what is so notable and distressing is that, after the first day when adults were clearly involved, this mayhem has been carried out in the main by teenagers and children, some as young as eight.

The idea that they should not steal other people’s property, or beat up and rob passers-by, appears to be as weird and outlandish to them as the suggestion that they should fly to the moon.

These youths feel absolutely entitled to go ‘on the rob’ and steal whatever they want. Indeed, they are incredulous that anyone should suggest they might pass up such an opportunity.

What has been fuelling all this is not poverty, as has so predictably been claimed, but moral collapse. What we have been experiencing is a complete breakdown of civilised behaviour among children and young people straight out of William Golding’s seminal novel about childhood savagery, Lord Of The Flies.

There has been much bewildered talk about ‘feral’ children, and desperate calls upon their parents to keep them in at night and to ask them about any stolen goods they are bringing home.

As if there were responsible parents in such homes! We are not merely up against feral children, but feral parents.

Of course these parents know their children are out on the streets. Of course they see them staggering back with what they have looted. But either they are too drunk or drugged or otherwise out of it to care, or else they are helping themselves to the proceeds, too.

As David Cameron observed yesterday, there are clearly pockets of society that are not just broken, but sick.

The causes of this sickness are many and complex. But three things can be said with certainty: every one of them is the fault of the liberal intelligentsia; every one of them was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government; and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family.

For most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit.

Of course there are many lone parents who do a tremendous job. But we’re talking here about widespread social collapse. And there are whole areas of Britain, white as well as black, where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon.

In such areas, successive generations are being brought up only by mothers, through whose houses pass transi-tory males by whom these women have yet more children — and who inevitably repeat the pattern of lone and dysfunctional parenting.

The result is fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them. Such children inhabit what is effectively a different world from the rest of society. It’s a world without any boundaries or rules. A world of emotional and physical chaos.

A world where a child responds to the slightest setback or disagreement by resorting to violence. A world where the parent is unwilling or incapable of providing the loving and disciplined framework that a child needs in order to thrive.

Yet instead of lone parenthood being regarded as a tragedy for individuals, and a catastrophe for society, it has been redefined as a ‘right’.

When Labour came to power in 1997, it set about systematically destroying not just the traditional family but the very idea that married parents were better for children than any other arrangement.

Instead, it introduced the sexual free-for-all of ‘lifestyle choice’; claimed that the idea of the male breadwinner was a sexist anachronism; and told girls that they could, and should, go it alone as mothers.

This was the outcome of the shattering defeat of Tony Blair, in the two years or so after he came to power, at the hands of the ultra-feminists and apostles of non-judgmentalism in his Cabinet and party who were deter-mined, above all, to destroy the traditional nuclear family.

Blair stood virtually alone against them, and lost.

One of these ultra-feminist wreckers was Harriet Harman. The other night, she was on TV preposterously suggesting that cuts in educational allowances or youth workers had something to do with young people torching and looting shops, robbing and leaving people for dead in the streets.

But Harman was one of the principal forces in the Labour government behind the promotion of lone parenthood and the marginalisation of fathers. If anyone should be blamed for bringing about the conditions which have led to these appalling scenes in our cities, it is surely Ms Harman.

And this breaking of the family was further condoned, rewarded and encouraged by the Welfare State, which conceives of need solely in terms of absence of money, and which accordingly subsidises lone parenthood and the destructive behaviour that fatherlessness brings in its train.

Welfare dependency further created the entitlement culture that the looters so egregiously display. It taught them that the world owed them a living. It taught them that their actions had no consequences. And it taught them that the world revolved around themselves.

The result of this toxic combination of welfare and non-judgmentalism was an explosion of elective lone par-enthood and dysfunctional behaviour transmitted down through the generations at the very bottom of the social heap — creating, in effect, a class apart.

Once, children would have been rescued from their disadvantaged backgrounds by schools which gave them not just an education but structure and purpose to their lives.

But the liberal intelligentsia destroyed that escape route, too. For its onslaught upon marriage — the bedrock institution of society — with a tax system that penalises married couples with a wife who doesn’t work, was replicated by an onslaught upon the understanding and very identity of that society. Instead of transmitting knowledge to children, teaching was deemed to be an attack upon a child’s autonomy and self-esteem.

Thus it was that teachers adopted the ‘child-centred’ approach, which expected children not only to learn for themselves but also to decide for themselves about behaviour such as sexual morality or drug-taking.

The outcome was that children were left illiterate and innumerate and unable to think. Abandoned to wander through the world without any guidance, they predictably ended up without any moral compass.

All of this was compounded still further by the disaster of multiculturalism — the doctrine which held that no culture could be considered superior to any other because that was ‘racist’.

That meant children were no longer taught about the nation in which they lived, and about its culture. So not only were they left in ignorance of their own society, but any attachment to a shared and over-arching culture was deliberately shattered.

Instead of forging social bonds, multiculturalism dissolved them — and introduced instead a primitive war of all against all, in which the strongest groups would destroy the weak.

Closely related to this was ‘victim culture’, in which all minority groups were regarded as victims of the majority. So any bad behaviour by them was excused and blamed on the majority.

In similar vein, all criminal wrongdoing was excused on the basis that the criminal couldn’t help himself, as he was the victim of circumstances such as poverty, unemployment, or as yet illusory cuts in public spending. The human rights of the criminal became seen as more important than the safety and security of his victims. Pun-ishment became a dirty word. So the entire criminal justice system turned into a sick joke, with young hoodlums walking off with community sentences or Asbos (insert for clarification - Anti-Social Behaviour Order(s) - JF) which they held in total contempt.

Mr Cameron has declared that all those convicted of violent disorder in these riots will go to prison.

Really? Isn’t it more likely that they will end up on some community penalty which will see them taken on trips to Alton Towers to make up for their disadvantaged upbringing? This is the normal response of our sentimentalised and addle-brained criminal justice officials.

In short, what we have seen unfolding before our horrified gaze over the past four days in Britain is the true legacy of the Labour years.

The social and moral breakdown behind the riots was deliberately willed upon Britain by Left-wing politicians and other middle-class ideologues who wrap their utter contempt for the poor in the mantle of ‘progressive’ non-judgmentalism.

These are the people who — against the evidence of a mountain of empirical research — hurl execrations at anyone who suggests that lone parenthood is, in general, a catastrophe for children (and a disaster for women); who promote drug liberalisation, oppose selective education (while paying for private tutors for their own children) and call those who oppose unlimited immigration and multiculturalism ‘racists’.

And the real victims of these people ‘who know best’ are always those at the bottom of the social heap, who possess neither the money nor the social or intellectual resources to cushion them against the most catastrophic effects of such nonsense.

Britain was once an ordered society that was the envy of the world — the most civilised, the most gentle and law-abiding.

Can Broken Britain be put together again? David Cameron is commendably talking tough: but will he have the stomach for tough action?

Will he, for example, remove the incentives to girls and women to have babies outside marriage? Will he dis-mantle the concept of entitlement from the Welfare State? Will he vigorously enforce the drug laws? Will he end the kid-glove treatment of ‘victim groups’, and hold them to account for their behaviour in exactly the same way as everyone else?

Repairing this terrible damage also means, dare I say it, a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality.

Anyone heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury about the riots? Anyone care to guess what he will eventually say about them? Quite.

When church leaders stop prattling like soft-headed social workers and start preaching, once again, the moral concepts that underlie our civilisation, and when our political leaders decide to oppose the culture war that has been waged against that civilisation rather than supinely acquiescing in its destruction, then — and only then — will we start to get to grips with this terrible problem.

Until then, within the smouldering embers of our smashed and burned-out cities, we can only look upon the ru-ins of the Britain we have so dearly loved; the Britain that once led the world towards civilisation, but is now so tragically leading the way out.

- 30 -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html#ixzz1V0vSY0lu

[Shwa]

This is the stuff no one wants to hear and why riots will not be confined to British cities. We have lessons to learn if we want to avoid similar disasters.

Britain's liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value

By Melanie Phillips

Daily Mail (Britain)

11th August 2011

The only lesson here is that Brit right wing bullshit is similar to North American right wing bullshit, both of them having in common with the left-wings of the respective regions and their penchant for bullshitting.

Fault of the liberal intelligentsia eh? Pity...

List of riots

1355 - St. Scholastica riot, (Oxford, England)

1517 - Evil May Day, (London, England)

1668 - Bawdy House Riots, London, England

1743 - London Gin Riots,(London, England)

1769 - Spitalfield Riots (Spitalfields (London), England)

1780 - Gordon Riots, (London, England)

1791 - Priestley Riots, (Birmingham, England)

1809 - Old Price Riots, 1809, (London, England)

1811-1812 - English Luddite Riots, (Leicester/York, England)

1814 - English Luddite Riots of 1814, (Leicester/York, England)

1816 - English Luddite Riots of 1816, (Leicester/York, England)

1830 - Swing Riots, (south and east of England)

1831 - Bristol Riots, (Bristol, England)

1910 - Tonypandy Riot (South Wales, UK)

1919 - Battle of Bow Street, (Bow Street, London, UK)

1919 - Luton Peace Day Riots, Luton U.K.

1936 - Battle of Cable Street, (London, England)

1958 - Nottingham race riots, (Nottingham, England)

1975 - Chapeltown riot Leeds, West Yorkshire ,England

1976 - Notting Hill Carnival Riot (London, England)

1979 - Southall Riots, (Southall, West London, England)

1980 - St Pauls riot, April 1980, (St Pauls, Bristol, England)

1981 - Brixton riot of 1981, (London, England)

1981 - Toxteth riots (Liverpool, England)

1981 - Moss Side riots (Manchester, England)

1981 - Chapeltown riot Leeds, West Yorkshire, England

1981 - First Handsworth Riot, (Birmingham, England)

1985 - Brixton riot of 1985, September 28, (London, England)

1985 - Broadwater Farm Riot, Oct. 6, (London, England)

1987 - Chapeltown riot Leeds, West Yorkshire, England

1989 - Leeds United riots / Birmingham, England

1990 - Poll Tax Riots, (London)

1991 - Carlton leach riot, Essex, England

1995 - Brixton riot of 1995, (London, England)

1995 - Hyde Park Riot, July 1995, Leeds, West Yorkshire

1995 - Manningham Riot, June 1995, (Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK)

2001 - Harehills riot Leeds, June 2001, West Yorkshire, England

2001 - Bradford Riot, July 2001, (Bradford, West Yorkshire, England)

2004 - Boston, Lincolnshire, England

2006 - Download Festival Riots, Donnington, England

2009 - Homecoming Parade, Luton, England

2009 – Race Riots in Birmingham, England

2010 - Student riots in London, England

2011 - Riots in London, England

This does not include riots in the greater UK, like Bloody Sunday, and does not include riots in colonies of Britain (we know how that all turned out in the former colony known as 'America.' Also, I am sure there are way more riots - especially football rioting - than are listed on wikipedia.

Rioting in England is as British as high tea and crumpets. And riots have taken place in practically all eras, under all political stripes, with or without family unity, liberals, conservatives, high or low values.

Eh? What was the "social values" in Nottingham in 1958? Or Leeds in 1975?

Righto old chap. Bullshit.

[CANADIEN]

I'd argue the list is a bit short on pogroms and anti-immigrant riots. Doesn't matter, though, because they will be ignored since they belong to the past (you know, when everyone ones their place) and they can't be blamed on "the left".

[eyeball]

Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe, 1919-2009

...the study assembled masses of data on historic protests, riots, assassinations and revolutions, and uncovered what the authors called “a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability.”

Economic downturns in themselves are not enough to spark riots, they found. The tinder box is government fiscal retrenchment, and its relation to social eruption is causal. “Once you cut expenditure by more than 2 per cent of GDP, instability increases rapidly in all dimensions, and especially in terms of riots and demonstrations,”

Economists have long argued that unrest and attempts at revolution are more likely when incomes are temporarily depressed

What happens when they become permanently depressed? Maybe crackin' down and gettin' tough will be the next big economic driver. I wonder how long we could sustain economic growth by making an industry out of arresting and imprisoning poor angry people?

So given the thread title am I to assume Britain's conservative intelligentsia is now working on a solution? This ought to be good.

[lukin]

Great article westviking, and so very true to those of us who actually pay attention and haven't yet been brainwashed by the anarchy agenda driven liberal apologists.

Read "The War Against the Family" by William Gairdner to see how these policies have invaded Canada. it's an eye opener.

The Liberal mantra of drink up, shoot in, as long as it feels good, is destroying western society.

[Michael Hardner]

Great article westviking, and so very true to those of us who actually pay attention and haven't yet been brainwashed by the anarchy agenda driven liberal apologists.

Read "The War Against the Family" by William Gairdner to see how these policies have invaded Canada. it's an eye opener.

The Liberal mantra of drink up, shoot in, as long as it feels good, is destroying western society.

There are a lot of non-liberal strains on families too: wage reduction, predatory credit practices, boundless materialism and hedonism. There's no framework for society to rein back the effects of these things either.

[GostHacked]

There are a lot of non-liberal strains on families too: wage reduction, predatory credit practices, boundless materialism and hedonism. There's no framework for society to rein back the effects of these things either.

That framework was destroyed when this new framework was put in. It can be put back in, people just need to change their views/lifestyles as we've changed in the past 100 years or so. We can't ever go back to the traditional completely, but we can revert back to some important things, like respect and live and let live. We have a youth that is conditioned to denounce parental authority in favour of some government authority. The more materialistic people are, the more shallow and vapid of a society you get. This is why more people can tell you who's who on Jersey Shore, while at the same time do not know who the members of their own government are (you know the ones they elected?!?!)

[Michael Hardner]

It can be put back in, people just need to change their views/lifestyles as we've changed in the past 100 years or so.

How would people change their views ? It can happen naturally (slowly) over time, or there can be a social movement to push it. There is some lamenting over the way things are, but I don't see a quick fix.

[GostHacked]

How would people change their views ? It can happen naturally (slowly) over time, or there can be a social movement to push it. There is some lamenting over the way things are, but I don't see a quick fix.

There is no quick fix, because the process to get where we are now, took decades. Society is almost conditioned to respond to a quick fix, because people and the ADHD prevent us from looking at the bigger picture and how things will affect us on the whole. Now now now now .. we want results now! And when they are told the process is going to be a long one, they lose interest in it, and in the end, do not want to wait for the fix.

You are correct, there is no QUICK fix, but there is a fix, if people are willing to suck it up and accept reality and accept change does not happen overnight.

[Thorn]

That framework was destroyed when this new framework was put in. It can be put back in, people just need to change their views/lifestyles as we've changed in the past 100 years or so. We can't ever go back to the traditional completely, but we can revert back to some important things, like respect and live and let live. We have a youth that is conditioned to denounce parental authority in favour of some government authority. The more materialistic people are, the more shallow and vapid of a society you get. This is why more people can tell you who's who on Jersey Shore, while at the same time do not know who the members of their own government are (you know the ones they elected?!?!)

But how do you change that? Even if you have the power to do whatever you want? We can't control whether women have children out of wedlock, and efforts at ensuring men help pay for the resulting offspring haven't helped much.

It would be nice if the schools enforced discipline, but the rules are such now that teachers are afraid to even touch children, and slackers get automatically passed up the line to the next grade, whether they know the work or not. The ultimate punishment for children who won't do the work or show up, or behave is expulsion, but that doesn't exactly help the child. Maybe we could bring back the days of nuns smacking kids in the head with rulers when they acted up. Re-introduce the strap and other forms of corporal punishment. Or maybe we could just make kids who don't comply run around the gym until they throw up. Don't know. But coddling has been tried and doesn't seem to work, overall.

[Oleg Bach]

England - the place of my birth..was once the island of angels. Now it is mess - with everyone in the world who flocked to this once paradise on earth and ruined it...It is as if when those who were considering immigation had the urge to shit - came to Britian to empty out - This is the fault...not of British left wing liberals - but the misguided and poorly invisioned right to maintain and gain more wealth - The whole idea back fired on them. Sure the left attempted to make it work and failed - and the right stood in agreement with the left thinking they could condition the new arrivals - failed.

The way left and right work is that those on the high end of the right scale - manipulate and dupe the left into doing their dirty work..under the guise of leftist benevolence...seems this team effort did not score a goal...so now they have a field that is un-controlable.

[Oleg Bach]

This is the effect of liberal secularist indoctrination. Back in the day - we as children took a pledge every moring. It consisted of saying the Lords Prayer. All schools did this at one time..It was not a case of beleiving in God or not - It was a case of anwering to a higher authority than the state...for instance - the pre-amble in our charter ---to para phrase.."The supremacy of God and the rule of law there under" - the effect this has is to put people into a state of higher mindedness - and to diswade individuals from becoming dictatorial. Se they got rid of this tried and true method of social control and replaced it with "what about Billy's feelings - would you like it if someone hurt you " The kids think about this and say "to hell with Billy - just give me your I-pod - before I bloody your nose.

[Oleg Bach]

What I ment to say plainly, is we as young school children took a pledge to be good every morning. Now they teach the kids that there is no difference between good and bad - so the kids have a CHOICE - to choose evil - and about 50% opt for evil and it's short term and instant rewards.

[Oleg Bach]

What I ment to say plainly, is we as young school children took a pledge to be good every morning. Now they teach the kids that there is no difference between good and bad - so the kids have a CHOICE - to choose evil - and about 50% opt for evil and it's short term and instant rewards.

[jbg]

This is the stuff no one wants to hear and why riots will not be confined to British cities. We have lessons to learn if we want to avoid similar disasters.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html#ixzz1V0vSY0lu

Great article westviking, and so very true to those of us who actually pay attention and haven't yet been brainwashed by the anarchy agenda driven liberal apologists.

Read "The War Against the Family" by William Gairdner to see how these policies have invaded Canada. it's an eye opener.

The Liberal mantra of drink up, shoot in, as long as it feels good, is destroying western society.

Great contribution. WestViking doesn't come here often but when he does it's always great.

The government's first responsibility is to ensure public order and safety, not promote some utopian version of social perfection. That is where many politically correct governments have gone seriously astray.

Edited August 16, 2011 by jbg

[Wild Bill]

How would people change their views ? It can happen naturally (slowly) over time, or there can be a social movement to push it. There is some lamenting over the way things are, but I don't see a quick fix.

I would agree with you, Michael! There's no way a negative culture that has been set up over a couple of generations will be fixed in a few weekends!

Fixes will indeed have to be slow because it's guaranteed that the British Left will NOT quietly allow any government to change things! They believe firmly in their agenda and will fight to the last loony to resist any attempts to change the "welfare nanny state".

Did you know that the model engineering hobby has almost disappeared in Britain? It has always amazed me some of the projects that these guys produce! Working steam powered replicas of locomotives, big enough for children to ride on tracks in the back yard. Working scale models of classic aircraft engines, including jets! There are now so many "safety" laws in running a lathe in your garage or basement that a hobbyist has virtually no change of getting approvals, even after spending a LOT of money! There are even paid inspectors that peek into people's basement windows looking for an undeclared engineering shop. I kid you not! The nanny state regulations are being made in the name of safety but in that hobby's community accidents have always been extremely rare. It's obviously just a "control-trip" thing. The same flakey kids that no one wanted to play with in high school are now inspectors and MAN! Do they love to wield their power!

It's a pity though. Such hobbies helped develop a pool of self-educated engineers, who might find jobs in the "real world" that could be to the nation's benefit. Such hobbyists wound up building Spitfires in WWII, just as ham radio operators were pressed into service as radio signalmen. The loony left is doing their best to stamp this out.

Sometimes I think they actually have it in for smart and practical people!

Edited August 16, 2011 by Wild Bill

[jacee]

From above link:

"Our findings suggest that fear of politica unrest may be an important factor that is holding back governments As expenditure cuts start to bite, the number of anti-government demonstrations, riots, genera strikes, attempts to overthrow the established order, and politica assassinations increases dramatically."

The society of today is irrelevant. Government austerity leads to unrest.

Remember Mike Harris? He didn't care, said the lawns of Queen's Park would be trampled, and they were. It has become clear to young people that peaceful protest is useless with right wing corporate funded parties. It's austerity for the poor and middle class and corporate welfare, tax cuts and slush fund handouts for the wealthy. It's transfer of dollars from our pockets into the pockets of the wealthiest few. It's disgusting, and it looks like the youth aren't buying it and aren't working within the system either.

[jbg]

Remember Mike Harris? He didn't care, said the lawns of Queen's Park would be trampled, and they were.

That was a while ago. And was Bob Rae any better for the poor?

[bud]

Great contribution. WestViking doesn't come here often but when he does it's always great.

The government's first responsibility is to ensure public order and safety, not promote some utopian version of social perfection. That is where many politically correct governments have gone seriously astray.

you used to call yourself a 'radical leftist lawyer'.

[Shwa]

It's a pity though. Such hobbies helped develop a pool of self-educated engineers, who might find jobs in the "real world" that could be to the nation's benefit. Such hobbyists wound up building Spitfires in WWII, just as ham radio operators were pressed into service as radio signalmen. The loony left is doing their best to stamp this out.

Stamp what out - war? Thank god for that!

You know, this is a primo example of that wistful pining for the 'olden days' when all was well, suburban family's were valued, where Wally and the Beave played safely in the streets. Just like on TV and in the magazines. A totally distorted view of the past, of course.

What you are forgetting Bill is that the engineer hobbyists are now more interested in computer engineering, virtual environment programming and other hight tech tooling. They have simply moved on from model trains and HAM radios. But fear not, even computer engineer hackers can be "pressed into service."

[jbg]

you used to call yourself a 'radical leftist lawyer'.

I am. Progress is dependent upon public safety. Why build what would be immediately destroyed?

[GostHacked]

It still amazes me to think that people are still stuck on this left-right bull. Both sides have gradually introduced nanny state legislation while robbing you blind and taking away your rights. Both sides are to blame, and once people figure that out, they can begin to understand how corrupt their government is overall.

It's the government that will take away your rights while telling you it is all for security. It is happening in many places.

[Black Dog]

So now the chickens have well and truly come home terrifyingly to roost. The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtu-ally every basic social value.

The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society.

Those of us who warned over the years that they were playing with fire were sneered at and smeared as Right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.

Now we can see what they have brought about in the unprecedented and horrific scenes of mob violence, with homes and businesses going up in flames, and epidemic looting.

Actually, the "unprecedented and horrific scenes of mob violence, with homes and businesses going up in flames, and epidemic looting" in no invalidate the assessment of people like the writer and the OP as right-wing nutters who wanted to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age.

The causes of this sickness are many and complex. But three things can be said with certainty: every one of them is the fault of the liberal intelligentsia; every one of them was instituted or exacerbated by the Labour government; and at the very heart of these problems lies the breakdown of the family.

"This is a complex issue for which I have developed a simplistic answer." Love it.

When Labour came to power in 1997, it set about systematically destroying not just the traditional family but the very idea that married parents were better for children than any other arrangement.

Holy shit. These liberal intelligensia are even more powerful than I thought, seeing as how they were able to overturn the established social order in less than two decades.

I really can't be arsed to carry on. But thanks for the laughs WestViking.

Great contribution. WestViking doesn't come here often but when he does it's always great.

Yeah you'd fit right in on WestViking's other forum Freak Dominion. Not sure why this wacko has to come here to post his comedy articles, though.

you used to call yourself a 'radical leftist lawyer'.

I think he's being ironic.

[Thorn]

In her column today in the Globe, Margaret Wente identifies the problem as a mix of social and economic. As she says, there is no path to manhood for many of the young today. They are ambivalent towards most work, aren't settled down by families or the responsibility for looking after them, and the kinds of largely physical and mindless jobs they used to be able to do are largely gone with the factories which provided them. So what do we do with all these young men who are shiftless and rootless?

This is nothing new in the history of the world – only in the history of our world. A surplus of unemployable, disruptive young males has often been the norm. Karl Marx described such people as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars.” (He was referring to 19th-century France.) Society had different ways of dealing with the problem. Many of these men would go to war as cannon fodder. Some would go to sea, or be transported to Australia. The more ambitious ones would strike out for the new world. Today we need another way. But no one has a clue what it might be.

Unskilled, Unmarried, Unwanted

[Sir Bandelot]

Indeed, I did not know there were Norwegian Vikings.