Who can forget Stanley Kubrick's dystopian tale of coddled hooligans run amok in pre-Thatcher England? Who is surprised that life is back to imitating art?
Last week's cultural eruption in London was not just an assault on property. It was a bold repudiation of the concept of property. The violence was widespread but it wasn't mindless. It was the natural consequence of an economic philosophy that holds great sway in many western democracies. This particular manifestation differed from what we've seen in Greece, yet the same moral decay preceded both. What's worse, the source of this decay is not an external force dedicated to evil but the policies of duly elected democratic governments sworn to promote the common good.
The rot is best captured in a riddle that has been making the rounds on the internet.
Q: What's the difference between the British welfare system and louts looting London?A: The louts cut out the middleman.
What happens when you teach people that profits are theft, that inequality of outcome is injustice, and that it is a basic human right for every citizen to have "access" to all the consumer goods their eyes behold?
What happens when you provide children with a public education so bad it renders them unfit for employment and once they become adults you pay them not to work, leaving them to rant at immigrants happy to take those few low skill jobs that haven't been destroyed by the heavy hand of regulation?
What happens when entire political parties devote themselves to securing, expanding, and defending massive income redistribution programs to the point that recipients become so numerous that they tilt the electoral balance?
What happens when you start limiting those programs to stave off national bankruptcy, yet you've disarmed law abiding citizens, instead promising them police protection that never comes?
London burns.
Think it can't happen here? Then you haven't been to Philadelphia, where flash mobs have been going on wilding sprees, robbing inner city residents and looting local stores, using overwhelming numbers to confound police, daring them to create "police brutality" incidents that can be used to incite further violence.
Problems like this don't arise overnight. Economies that rely on the rule of law must rest on a widely accepted moral foundation. This foundation is not immune from being chipped away. Unless we all confront and fight moral degeneration wherever we see it, it will inevitably take its toll. If society reaches the point that it takes a phalanx of policemen to protect every shopkeeper, the war has already been lost.
When was the last time you heard a major cultural figure say that welfare recipients should be grateful, humble, and embarrassed, compared to the army of poverty professionals and community organizers that trumpet welfare "rights" demanding ever more? What happens to a free market economy whose growth depends on entrepreneurs when a President incessantly rails at "millionaires and billionaires," claiming that "the people" have an a priori right to share the property of any citizen solely because certain citizens have more and some have less? How can anyone be surprised when those with less are inspired to take matters into their own hands?
It may sound harsh but if society's losers don't understand why they are losing, what personal responsibility they bear for their failings, what actions they can take to improve their own lot, and why it is wicked and shameful to burn, loot, and steal, then it's our job to teach them. The prospect of swift and certain punishment is a good place to start. Politicians that pander to lawless factions and their apologists need to be taught a lesson as well, via rapid electoral retirement. Academic, religious, and cultural leaders who excuse these outbursts of violence or try to justify them based on a misguided altruist creed need to be vigorously debated or booed off the stage. Not doing so is equivalent to granting their repugnant ideas your moral sanction.
Class warfare need not be just a metaphor. If its moral underpinnings aren't addressed and demolished, it is coming to a city near you.
Bill Frezza is a Boston-based writer and venture capitalist. He can be reached at bill@vereverus.com. If you would like to subscribe to his weekly column, drop a note to publisher@vereverus.com or follow him on Twitter @BillFrezza.
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