Your decline of western civilization round-up

Fightback! 16,000 police ready to use plastic bullets keep a lid on London's looters


They're getting "ready"? Good to know.

Graham Reeves, 52, stood dumbstruck in front of the smoldering ruins of his family store, the House of Reeves on Croydon in south London. The store is a local landmark that had been run by his family for decades — he said his 80-year-old father was hysterical upon hearing the news.

"No one's stolen anything," Graham Reeves said. "They just burnt it down."

About 525 arrests have been made in London alone and dozens were arrested in other cities. The riots also claimed their first death — a 26-year-old found shot dead in a car.

"Why was nothing done to stop them?" said teacher Julia Adegoke. "More force should have been used."

One of the more depressing things about these riots is the way that the only thing that the Police can think of to say to us non-looters and non-arsonists is: "Don't join in" and "Let us handle it". If the bad guys start to torch your house, let them get on with it. If they attack your next door neighbour, don't join in on his side. Run away. Let the barbarians occupy and trash whatever territory they pick on and steal or destroy whatever property they want to.

There was a fascinating impromptu TV interview with some young citizens of Clapham last night, not "experts", just regular citizens, one of whom stated the opposite policy. Law abiding persons should get out of their houses, he said, en masse, and be ready to defend them.

The trouble with "letting the Police do their job" is that in the precise spot in which you happen to live, or used to live, their job probably won't start, if it ever does start, for about a week. In the meantime, letting the Police do their job means letting the damn looters and arsonists do their job, without anyone laying a finger on them, laying a finger on them being illegal. This is a doomed policy. If most people are compelled by law to be only neutral bystanders in a war between themselves and barbarism, barbarism wins. The right to, at the very least, forceful self defence must now be insisted upon. The Police, as we advocates of the don't-disarm-the-victims-of-crime policy have been pointing out for decades, can't be everywhere. They cannot instantaneously attend every crime, and magically prevent it. Only the potential or actual victims of crime can sometimes immediately prevent or immediately punish crime, provided only that they not forbidden to.

Think those London shop-owners might be in the market for some heavily-armed L.A.-based Korean shop-owners.


The public safety trumping your-home-is-your-castle rationale reminds us of the lunacy of the Indiana Supreme Court ruling that residents must allow police to enter their residence even if the police do not have cause to enter the residence. Capitulation to the barbarians and capitulation to the state. At the end of the 4th amendment day, what really is the difference?



It's not about any spending cuts:

Of course the predator political class are going to use the behaviour of the predator social class they created to justify their continued existence... no surprise there.

But all it takes is a look at the footage or a walk down the right street if you live in London, to see that the thugs in question, with a Blackberry in one hand and wearing expensive trainers, are not doing this because "Haringey Council has lost £41m from its budget". Does anyone seriously think these rioters are doing what they are doing because their 'Youth Services' Danegeld was cut back?

Just look at this...

... these are the bastard children of Diane Abbott and David Cameron... and their lineage goes all the way back to Clement Attlee...and all the other members of the political class who created them as the Welfare State progressively hollowed out civil society. These are the product of the demon seed that was planted in 1945 and progressively watered ever more lavishly each year.

So yes, the largely fictitious 'cuts' are indeed to blame. Far far far too little and 20 years too late.

Wards of the state. Any sense of decency, self-reliance, self-worth and compassion gutted and hollowed-out by the promise of a blissful, worry-free statist utopia. Because perpetual dependency means never having to grow up.






And for a completely different take on the sacredness of property rights...

H/T: Instapundit